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Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
|
Poem: Helas!
|
To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?
|
To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
|
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?
|
sonnet
|
William Shakespeare
|
The Sonnets XCIII - So shall I live, supposing thou art true
|
So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceived husband; so love's face
May still seem love to me, though alter'd new;
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
In many's looks, the false heart's history
Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange.
But heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!
|
So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceived husband; so love's face
May still seem love to me, though alter'd new;
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
|
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
In many's looks, the false heart's history
Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange.
But heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!
|
sonnet
|
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
|
Helena
|
Last night I saw Helena. She whose praise
Of late all men have sounded. She for whom
Young Angus rashly sought a silent tomb
Rather than live without her all his days.
Wise men go mad who look upon her long,
She is so ripe with dangers. Yet meanwhile
I find no fascination in her smile,
Although I make her theme of this poor song.
"Her golden tresses?" yes, they may be fair,
And yet to me each shining silken tress
Seems robbed of beauty and all lustreless -
Too many hands have stroked Helena's hair.
(I know a little maiden so demure
She will not let her one true lover's hands
In playful fondness touch her soft brown bands
So dainty-minded is she, and so pure.)
"Her great dark eyes that flash like gems at night?
Large, long-lashed eyes and lustrous?" that may be,
And yet they are not beautiful to me.
Too many hearts have sunned in their delight.
(I mind me of two tender blue eyes, hid
So underneath white curtains, and so veiled
That I have sometimes plead for hours, and failed
To see more than the shyly lifted lid.)
"Her perfect mouth so liked a carved kiss?"
"Her honeyed-mouth, where hearts do, fly-like, drown?"
I would not taste its sweetness for a crown;
Too many lips have drank its nectared bliss.
(I know a mouth whose virgin dew, undried,
Lies like a young grape's bloom, untouched and sweet,
And though I plead in passion at her feet,
She would not let me brush it if I died.)
In vain, Helena! though wise men may vie
For thy rare smile, or die from loss of it,
Armoured by my sweet lady's trust, I sit,
And know thou are not worth her faintest sigh.
|
Last night I saw Helena. She whose praise
Of late all men have sounded. She for whom
Young Angus rashly sought a silent tomb
Rather than live without her all his days.
Wise men go mad who look upon her long,
She is so ripe with dangers. Yet meanwhile
I find no fascination in her smile,
Although I make her theme of this poor song.
"Her golden tresses?" yes, they may be fair,
And yet to me each shining silken tress
Seems robbed of beauty and all lustreless -
Too many hands have stroked Helena's hair.
|
(I know a little maiden so demure
She will not let her one true lover's hands
In playful fondness touch her soft brown bands
So dainty-minded is she, and so pure.)
"Her great dark eyes that flash like gems at night?
Large, long-lashed eyes and lustrous?" that may be,
And yet they are not beautiful to me.
Too many hearts have sunned in their delight.
(I mind me of two tender blue eyes, hid
So underneath white curtains, and so veiled
That I have sometimes plead for hours, and failed
To see more than the shyly lifted lid.)
"Her perfect mouth so liked a carved kiss?"
"Her honeyed-mouth, where hearts do, fly-like, drown?"
I would not taste its sweetness for a crown;
Too many lips have drank its nectared bliss.
(I know a mouth whose virgin dew, undried,
Lies like a young grape's bloom, untouched and sweet,
And though I plead in passion at her feet,
She would not let me brush it if I died.)
In vain, Helena! though wise men may vie
For thy rare smile, or die from loss of it,
Armoured by my sweet lady's trust, I sit,
And know thou are not worth her faintest sigh.
|
free_verse
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
From Alcuin
|
The sea is the road of the bold,
Frontier of the wheat-sown plains,
The pit wherein the streams are rolled
And fountain of the rains.
|
The sea is the road of the bold,
|
Frontier of the wheat-sown plains,
The pit wherein the streams are rolled
And fountain of the rains.
|
quatrain
|
Unknown
|
Nursery Rhyme. CCCCXI. Jingles.
|
Sing, sing, what shall I sing?
The cat has eat the pudding-string;
Do, do, what shall I do?
The cat has bit it quite in two.
|
Sing, sing, what shall I sing?
|
The cat has eat the pudding-string;
Do, do, what shall I do?
The cat has bit it quite in two.
|
quatrain
|
William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)
|
Judgment Day
|
The nations are in the proving;
Each day is Judgment Day;
And the peoples He finds wanting
Shall pass--by the Shadowy Way.
|
The nations are in the proving;
|
Each day is Judgment Day;
And the peoples He finds wanting
Shall pass--by the Shadowy Way.
|
quatrain
|
John Hartley
|
A True Tale.
|
Ther's a Squire lives at th' Hall 'at's lukt up to,
As if he wor ommost a god.
He's hansum, he's rich, an he's clivver,
An fowk's praad if he gives 'em a nod.
He keeps carriages, horses an dogs,
For spooartin, or fancy, or labor,
He's a pew set apart in a church,
An he's reckoned a varry gooid naybor.
Ther's a woman bedrabbled an weet,
Crouched daan in a doorhoil to rest;
Her een strangely breet, - her face like a sheet,
An her long hair hings ovver her breast.
Want's shrivell'd her body to nowt,
An vice has set th' stamp on her face;
An her heart's grown soa callous an hard,
'At it connot be touched wi' disgrace.
Ther's a child bundled up i' some rags,
'At's whinin its poor life away;
Neglected an starvin on th' flags,
On this wild, cold an dree winter's day.
An its father is dinin at th' Hall,
An its mother is deein wi' th' cold,
Withaat even a morsel o' breead,
Yet its father is rollin i' gold.
Ther's a grey heeaded man an his wife,
Who are bow'd daan wi' grief, - net wi' years: -
Ivver mournin a dowter they've lost,
Ivver silently dryin ther tears.
Shoo wor th' hooap an pride o' ther life,
Till a Squire put strange thowts in her heead;
Then shoo fled an they ne'er saw her mooar,
Soa they mourn her as if shoo wor deead.
Ther's One up aboon sees it all;
He values noa titles nor brass,
He cares noa mooar for a rich Squire,
Nor He does for a poor country lass,
His messengers now hover near,
Till that mother an child yield ther breath,
An th' Squire has noa longer a fear,
For his secret is lockt up in death.
|
Ther's a Squire lives at th' Hall 'at's lukt up to,
As if he wor ommost a god.
He's hansum, he's rich, an he's clivver,
An fowk's praad if he gives 'em a nod.
He keeps carriages, horses an dogs,
For spooartin, or fancy, or labor,
He's a pew set apart in a church,
An he's reckoned a varry gooid naybor.
Ther's a woman bedrabbled an weet,
Crouched daan in a doorhoil to rest;
Her een strangely breet, - her face like a sheet,
An her long hair hings ovver her breast.
Want's shrivell'd her body to nowt,
|
An vice has set th' stamp on her face;
An her heart's grown soa callous an hard,
'At it connot be touched wi' disgrace.
Ther's a child bundled up i' some rags,
'At's whinin its poor life away;
Neglected an starvin on th' flags,
On this wild, cold an dree winter's day.
An its father is dinin at th' Hall,
An its mother is deein wi' th' cold,
Withaat even a morsel o' breead,
Yet its father is rollin i' gold.
Ther's a grey heeaded man an his wife,
Who are bow'd daan wi' grief, - net wi' years: -
Ivver mournin a dowter they've lost,
Ivver silently dryin ther tears.
Shoo wor th' hooap an pride o' ther life,
Till a Squire put strange thowts in her heead;
Then shoo fled an they ne'er saw her mooar,
Soa they mourn her as if shoo wor deead.
Ther's One up aboon sees it all;
He values noa titles nor brass,
He cares noa mooar for a rich Squire,
Nor He does for a poor country lass,
His messengers now hover near,
Till that mother an child yield ther breath,
An th' Squire has noa longer a fear,
For his secret is lockt up in death.
|
free_verse
|
Richard Le Gallienne
|
Ballade Of The Absent Guest
|
Friends whom to-night once more I greet,
Most glad am I with you to be,
And, as I look around, I meet
Many a face right good to see;
But one I miss - ah! where is he? -
Of merry eye and sparkling jest,
Who used to brim my glass for me;
I drink - in what? - the Absent Guest.
Low lies he in his winding-sheet,
By organized hypocrisy
Hurled from his happy wine-clad seat,
Stilled his kind heart and hushed his glee;
His very name daren't mention we,
That good old friend who brought such zest,
And set our tongues and spirits free:
I drink - in what? - the Absent Guest.
No choice to-night 'twixt "dry" or "sweet,"
'Twixt red or white, 'twixt Rye, - ah! me -
Or Scotch - and think! we live to see't -
No whispered word, nor massive fee,
Nor even influenza plea,
Can raise a bubble; but, as best
We may, we make our hollow spree:
I drink - in what? - the Absent Guest.
ENVOI
Friends, good is coffee, good is tea,
And water has a charm unguessed -
And yet - that brave old deity!
I drink - in tears - the Absent Guest.
|
Friends whom to-night once more I greet,
Most glad am I with you to be,
And, as I look around, I meet
Many a face right good to see;
But one I miss - ah! where is he? -
Of merry eye and sparkling jest,
Who used to brim my glass for me;
I drink - in what? - the Absent Guest.
Low lies he in his winding-sheet,
|
By organized hypocrisy
Hurled from his happy wine-clad seat,
Stilled his kind heart and hushed his glee;
His very name daren't mention we,
That good old friend who brought such zest,
And set our tongues and spirits free:
I drink - in what? - the Absent Guest.
No choice to-night 'twixt "dry" or "sweet,"
'Twixt red or white, 'twixt Rye, - ah! me -
Or Scotch - and think! we live to see't -
No whispered word, nor massive fee,
Nor even influenza plea,
Can raise a bubble; but, as best
We may, we make our hollow spree:
I drink - in what? - the Absent Guest.
ENVOI
Friends, good is coffee, good is tea,
And water has a charm unguessed -
And yet - that brave old deity!
I drink - in tears - the Absent Guest.
|
free_verse
|
Bliss Carman (William)
|
Outbound
|
A lonely sail in the vast sea-room,
I have put out for the port of gloom.
The voyage is far on the trackless tide,
The watch is long, and the seas are wide.
The headlands blue in the sinking day
Kiss me a hand on the outward way.
The fading gulls, as they dip and veer,
Lift me a voice that is good to hear.
The great winds come, and the heaving sea,
The restless mother, is calling me.
The cry of her heart is lone and wild,
Searching the night for her wandered child.
Beautiful, weariless mother of mine,
In the drift of doom I am here, I am thine.
Beyond the fathom of hope or fear,
From bourn to bourn of the dusk I steer,
Swept on in the wake of the stars, in the stream
Of a roving tide, from dream to dream.
|
A lonely sail in the vast sea-room,
I have put out for the port of gloom.
The voyage is far on the trackless tide,
The watch is long, and the seas are wide.
The headlands blue in the sinking day
Kiss me a hand on the outward way.
|
The fading gulls, as they dip and veer,
Lift me a voice that is good to hear.
The great winds come, and the heaving sea,
The restless mother, is calling me.
The cry of her heart is lone and wild,
Searching the night for her wandered child.
Beautiful, weariless mother of mine,
In the drift of doom I am here, I am thine.
Beyond the fathom of hope or fear,
From bourn to bourn of the dusk I steer,
Swept on in the wake of the stars, in the stream
Of a roving tide, from dream to dream.
|
free_verse
|
John Clare
|
Spring.
|
What charms does Nature at the spring put on,
When hedges unperceived get stain'd in green;
When even moss, that gathers on the stone,
Crown'd with its little knobs of flowers is seen;
And every road and lane, through field and glen,
Triumphant boasts a garden of its own.
In spite of nipping sheep, and hungry cow,
The little daisy finds a place to blow:
And where old Winter leaves her splashy slough,
The lady-smocks will not disdain to grow;
And dandelions like to suns will bloom,
Aside some bank or hillock creeping low;--
Though each too often meets a hasty doom
From trampling clowns, who heed not where they go.
|
What charms does Nature at the spring put on,
When hedges unperceived get stain'd in green;
When even moss, that gathers on the stone,
Crown'd with its little knobs of flowers is seen;
|
And every road and lane, through field and glen,
Triumphant boasts a garden of its own.
In spite of nipping sheep, and hungry cow,
The little daisy finds a place to blow:
And where old Winter leaves her splashy slough,
The lady-smocks will not disdain to grow;
And dandelions like to suns will bloom,
Aside some bank or hillock creeping low;--
Though each too often meets a hasty doom
From trampling clowns, who heed not where they go.
|
sonnet
|
Dora Sigerson Shorter
|
Beware
|
I closed my hands upon a moth
And when I drew my palms apart,
Instead of dusty, broken wings
I found a bleeding human heart.
I crushed my foot upon a worm
That had my garden for its goal,
But when I drew my foot aside
I found a dying human soul.
|
I closed my hands upon a moth
And when I drew my palms apart,
|
Instead of dusty, broken wings
I found a bleeding human heart.
I crushed my foot upon a worm
That had my garden for its goal,
But when I drew my foot aside
I found a dying human soul.
|
octave
|
William Butler Yeats
|
On Hearing That The Students Of Our New University Have Joined The Ancient Order Of Hibernians And The Agitation Against Immoral Literature
|
Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle-age.
|
Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,
|
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle-age.
|
quatrain
|
Robert Burns
|
Impromptu, To Miss Ainslie.
|
Fair maid, you need not take the hint,
Nor idle texts pursue:-
'Twas guilty sinners that he meant,
Not angels such as you!
|
Fair maid, you need not take the hint,
|
Nor idle texts pursue:-
'Twas guilty sinners that he meant,
Not angels such as you!
|
quatrain
|
Unknown
|
Nursery Rhyme. CCCXIII. Games.
|
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury-cross,
To see an old lady upon a white horse,
Rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes,
And so she makes music wherever she goes.
|
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury-cross,
|
To see an old lady upon a white horse,
Rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes,
And so she makes music wherever she goes.
|
quatrain
|
William Wordsworth
|
November, 1806
|
Another year! another deadly blow!
Another mighty Empire overthrown!
And We are left, or shall be left, alone;
The last that dare to struggle with the Foe.
'Tis well! from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought;
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low.
O dastard whom such foretaste doth not cheer!
We shall exult, if they who rule the land
Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
Wise, upright, valiant; not a servile band,
Who are to judge of danger which they fear,
And honour which they do not understand.
|
Another year! another deadly blow!
Another mighty Empire overthrown!
And We are left, or shall be left, alone;
The last that dare to struggle with the Foe.
|
'Tis well! from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought;
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low.
O dastard whom such foretaste doth not cheer!
We shall exult, if they who rule the land
Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
Wise, upright, valiant; not a servile band,
Who are to judge of danger which they fear,
And honour which they do not understand.
|
sonnet
|
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
|
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - A Prophecy Of Judgment. No. 2. The Doom Of The Impious.
|
La scuola inimicissima.
You sect most adverse to the good and true,
Degenerate from your origin divine,
Pastured on lies and shadows by the line
Of Thais, Sinon, Judas, Homer! You,
Thus saith the Spirit, when the retinue
Of saints with Christ returns on earth to shine,
When the fifth angel's vial pours condign
Vengeance with awful ire and torments due,--
You shall be girt with gloom; your lips profane,
Disloyal tongues, and savage teeth shall grind
And gnash with fury fell and anger vain:
In Malebolge your damned souls confined
On fiery marle, for increment of pain,
Shall see the saved rejoice with mirth of mind.
|
La scuola inimicissima.
You sect most adverse to the good and true,
Degenerate from your origin divine,
Pastured on lies and shadows by the line
Of Thais, Sinon, Judas, Homer! You,
|
Thus saith the Spirit, when the retinue
Of saints with Christ returns on earth to shine,
When the fifth angel's vial pours condign
Vengeance with awful ire and torments due,--
You shall be girt with gloom; your lips profane,
Disloyal tongues, and savage teeth shall grind
And gnash with fury fell and anger vain:
In Malebolge your damned souls confined
On fiery marle, for increment of pain,
Shall see the saved rejoice with mirth of mind.
|
free_verse
|
Unknown
|
Nursery Rhyme. DXXIX. Natural History.
|
Johnny Armstrong kill'd a calf,
Peter Henderson got the half;
Willy Wilkinson got the head,
Ring the bell, the calf is dead!
|
Johnny Armstrong kill'd a calf,
|
Peter Henderson got the half;
Willy Wilkinson got the head,
Ring the bell, the calf is dead!
|
quatrain
|
Robert Herrick
|
To Julia.
|
I am zealless; prithee pray
For my welfare, Julia,
For I think the gods require
Male perfumes, but female fire.
|
I am zealless; prithee pray
|
For my welfare, Julia,
For I think the gods require
Male perfumes, but female fire.
|
quatrain
|
Maurice Henry Hewlett
|
Wages
|
Sometimes the spirit that never leaves me quite
Taps at my heart when thou art in the way,
Saying, Now thy Queen cometh: therefore pray,
Lest she should see thee vile, and at the sight
Shiver and fly back piteous to the light
That wanes when she is absent. Then, as I may,
I wash my soil'd hands and muttering, say,
Lord, make me clean; robe Thou me in Thy white!
So for a brief space, clad in ecstasy,
Pure, disembodied, I fall to kiss thy feet,
And sense thy glory throbbing round about;
Whereafter, rising, I hold thee in a sweet
And gentle converse that lifts me up to be,
When thou art gone, strange to the gross world's rout.
|
Sometimes the spirit that never leaves me quite
Taps at my heart when thou art in the way,
Saying, Now thy Queen cometh: therefore pray,
Lest she should see thee vile, and at the sight
|
Shiver and fly back piteous to the light
That wanes when she is absent. Then, as I may,
I wash my soil'd hands and muttering, say,
Lord, make me clean; robe Thou me in Thy white!
So for a brief space, clad in ecstasy,
Pure, disembodied, I fall to kiss thy feet,
And sense thy glory throbbing round about;
Whereafter, rising, I hold thee in a sweet
And gentle converse that lifts me up to be,
When thou art gone, strange to the gross world's rout.
|
sonnet
|
Unknown
|
Nursery Rhyme. CCCLXXII. Paradoxes.
|
There was an old woman had nothing,
And there came thieves to rob her;
When she cried out she made no noise,
But all the country heard her.
|
There was an old woman had nothing,
|
And there came thieves to rob her;
When she cried out she made no noise,
But all the country heard her.
|
quatrain
|
George MacDonald
|
The Diary Of An Old Soul. - January.
|
1.
LORD, what I once had done with youthful might,
Had I been from the first true to the truth,
Grant me, now old, to do--with better sight,
And humbler heart, if not the brain of youth;
So wilt thou, in thy gentleness and ruth,
Lead back thy old soul, by the path of pain,
Round to his best--young eyes and heart and brain.
2.
A dim aurora rises in my east,
Beyond the line of jagged questions hoar,
As if the head of our intombed High Priest
Began to glow behind the unopened door:
Sure the gold wings will soon rise from the gray!--
They rise not. Up I rise, press on the more,
To meet the slow coming of the Master's day.
3.
Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot,
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee;
Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn,
Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity:
Oh, thou who knowest! save thy child forlorn.
4.
Death, like high faith, levelling, lifteth all.
When I awake, my daughter and my son,
Grown sister and brother, in my arms shall fall,
Tenfold my girl and boy. Sure every one
Of all the brood to the old wings will run.
Whole-hearted is my worship of the man
From whom my earthly history began.
5.
Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;
Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;
My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think,--O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.
6.
Then shall I breathe in sweetest sharing, then
Think in harmonious consort with my kin;
Then shall I love well all my father's men,
Feel one with theirs the life my heart within.
Oh brothers! sisters holy! hearts divine!
Then I shall be all yours, and nothing mine--
To every human heart a mother-twin.
7.
I see a child before an empty house,
Knocking and knocking at the closed door;
He wakes dull echoes--but nor man nor mouse,
If he stood knocking there for evermore.--
A mother angel, see! folding each wing,
Soft-walking, crosses straight the empty floor,
And opens to the obstinate praying thing.
8.
Were there but some deep, holy spell, whereby
Always I should remember thee--some mode
Of feeling the pure heat-throb momently
Of the spirit-fire still uttering this I!--
Lord, see thou to it, take thou remembrance' load:
Only when I bethink me can I cry;
Remember thou, and prick me with love's goad.
9.
If to myself--"God sometimes interferes"--
I said, my faith at once would be struck blind.
I see him all in all, the lifing mind,
Or nowhere in the vacant miles and years.
A love he is that watches and that hears,
Or but a mist fumed up from minds of men,
Whose fear and hope reach out beyond their ken.
10.
When I no more can stir my soul to move,
And life is but the ashes of a fire;
When I can but remember that my heart
Once used to live and love, long and aspire,--
Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art;
Be thou the calling, before all answering love,
And in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.
11.
I thought that I had lost thee; but, behold!
Thou comest to me from the horizon low,
Across the fields outspread of green and gold--
Fair carpet for thy feet to come and go.
Whence I know not, or how to me thou art come!--
Not less my spirit with calm bliss doth glow,
Meeting thee only thus, in nature vague and dumb.
12.
Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind!
My soul in storm is but a tattered sail,
Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale;
In calm, 'tis but a limp and flapping thing:
Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wing,--
To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind
Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find.
13.
The idle flapping of the sail is doubt;
Faith swells it full to breast the breasting seas.
Bold, conscience, fast, and rule the ruling helm;
Hell's freezing north no tempest can send out,
But it shall toss thee homeward to thy leas;
Boisterous wave-crest never shall o'erwhelm
Thy sea-float bark as safe as field-borne rooted elm.
14.
Sometimes, hard-trying, it seems I cannot pray--
For doubt, and pain, and anger, and all strife.
Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from the nest
May fall, flit, fly, perch--crouch in the bowery breast
Of the large, nation-healing tree of life;--
Moveless there sit through all the burning day,
And on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay.
15.
My harvest withers. Health, my means to live--
All things seem rushing straight into the dark.
But the dark still is God. I would not give
The smallest silver-piece to turn the rush
Backward or sideways. Am I not a spark
Of him who is the light?--Fair hope doth flush
My east.--Divine success--Oh, hush and hark!
16.
Thy will be done. I yield up everything.
"The life is more than meat"--then more than health;
"The body more than raiment"--then than wealth;
The hairs I made not, thou art numbering.
Thou art my life--I the brook, thou the spring.
Because thine eyes are open, I can see;
Because thou art thyself, 'tis therefore I am me.
17.
No sickness can come near to blast my health;
My life depends not upon any meat;
My bread comes not from any human tilth;
No wings will grow upon my changeless wealth;
Wrong cannot touch it, violence or deceit;
Thou art my life, my health, my bank, my barn--
And from all other gods thou plain dost warn.
18.
Care thou for mine whom I must leave behind;
Care that they know who 'tis for them takes care;
Thy present patience help them still to bear;
Lord, keep them clearing, growing, heart and mind;
In one thy oneness us together bind;
Last earthly prayer with which to thee I cling--
Grant that, save love, we owe not anything.
19.
'Tis well, for unembodied thought a live,
True house to build--of stubble, wood, nor hay;
So, like bees round the flower by which they thrive,
My thoughts are busy with the informing truth,
And as I build, I feed, and grow in youth--
Hoping to stand fresh, clean, and strong, and gay,
When up the east comes dawning His great day.
20.
Thy will is truth--'tis therefore fate, the strong.
Would that my will did sweep full swing with thine!
Then harmony with every spheric song,
And conscious power, would give sureness divine.
Who thinks to thread thy great laws' onward throng,
Is as a fly that creeps his foolish way
Athwart an engine's wheels in smooth resistless play.
21.
Thou in my heart hast planted, gardener divine,
A scion of the tree of life: it grows;
But not in every wind or weather it blows;
The leaves fall sometimes from the baby tree,
And the life-power seems melting into pine;
Yet still the sap keeps struggling to the shine,
And the unseen root clings cramplike unto thee.
22.
Do thou, my God, my spirit's weather control;
And as I do not gloom though the day be dun,
Let me not gloom when earth-born vapours roll
Across the infinite zenith of my soul.
Should sudden brain-frost through the heart's summer run,
Cold, weary, joyless, waste of air and sun,
Thou art my south, my summer-wind, my all, my one.
23.
O Life, why dost thou close me up in death?
O Health, why make me inhabit heaviness?--
I ask, yet know: the sum of this distress,
Pang-haunted body, sore-dismayed mind,
Is but the egg that rounds the winged faith;
When that its path into the air shall find,
My heart will follow, high above cold, rain, and wind.
24.
I can no more than lift my weary eyes;
Therefore I lift my weary eyes--no more.
But my eyes pull my heart, and that, before
'Tis well awake, knocks where the conscience lies;
Conscience runs quick to the spirit's hidden door:
Straightway, from every sky-ward window, cries
Up to the Father's listening ears arise.
25.
Not in my fancy now I search to find thee;
Not in its loftiest forms would shape or bind thee;
I cry to one whom I can never know,
Filling me with an infinite overflow;
Not to a shape that dwells within my heart,
Clothed in perfections love and truth assigned thee,
But to the God thou knowest that thou art.
26.
Not, Lord, because I have done well or ill;
Not that my mind looks up to thee clear-eyed;
Not that it struggles in fast cerements tied;
Not that I need thee daily sorer still;
Not that I wretched, wander from thy will;
Not now for any cause to thee I cry,
But this, that thou art thou, and here am I.
27.
Yestereve, Death came, and knocked at my thin door.
I from my window looked: the thing I saw,
The shape uncouth, I had not seen before.
I was disturbed--with fear, in sooth, not awe;
Whereof ashamed, I instantly did rouse
My will to seek thee--only to fear the more:
Alas! I could not find thee in the house.
28.
I was like Peter when he began to sink.
To thee a new prayer therefore I have got--
That, when Death comes in earnest to my door,
Thou wouldst thyself go, when the latch doth clink,
And lead him to my room, up to my cot;
Then hold thy child's hand, hold and leave him not,
Till Death has done with him for evermore.
29.
Till Death has done with him?--Ah, leave me then!
And Death has done with me, oh, nevermore!
He comes--and goes--to leave me in thy arms,
Nearer thy heart, oh, nearer than before!
To lay thy child, naked, new-born again
Of mother earth, crept free through many harms,
Upon thy bosom--still to the very core.
30.
Come to me, Lord: I will not speculate how,
Nor think at which door I would have thee appear,
Nor put off calling till my floors be swept,
But cry, "Come, Lord, come any way, come now."
Doors, windows, I throw wide; my head I bow,
And sit like some one who so long has slept
That he knows nothing till his life draw near.
31.
O Lord, I have been talking to the people;
Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone,
And the recoil of my words' airy ripple
My heart unheedful has puffed up and blown.
Therefore I cast myself before thee prone:
Lay cool hands on my burning brain, and press
From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.
|
1.
LORD, what I once had done with youthful might,
Had I been from the first true to the truth,
Grant me, now old, to do--with better sight,
And humbler heart, if not the brain of youth;
So wilt thou, in thy gentleness and ruth,
Lead back thy old soul, by the path of pain,
Round to his best--young eyes and heart and brain.
2.
A dim aurora rises in my east,
Beyond the line of jagged questions hoar,
As if the head of our intombed High Priest
Began to glow behind the unopened door:
Sure the gold wings will soon rise from the gray!--
They rise not. Up I rise, press on the more,
To meet the slow coming of the Master's day.
3.
Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot,
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee;
Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn,
Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity:
Oh, thou who knowest! save thy child forlorn.
4.
Death, like high faith, levelling, lifteth all.
When I awake, my daughter and my son,
Grown sister and brother, in my arms shall fall,
Tenfold my girl and boy. Sure every one
Of all the brood to the old wings will run.
Whole-hearted is my worship of the man
From whom my earthly history began.
5.
Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;
Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;
My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think,--O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.
6.
Then shall I breathe in sweetest sharing, then
Think in harmonious consort with my kin;
Then shall I love well all my father's men,
Feel one with theirs the life my heart within.
Oh brothers! sisters holy! hearts divine!
Then I shall be all yours, and nothing mine--
To every human heart a mother-twin.
7.
I see a child before an empty house,
Knocking and knocking at the closed door;
He wakes dull echoes--but nor man nor mouse,
If he stood knocking there for evermore.--
A mother angel, see! folding each wing,
Soft-walking, crosses straight the empty floor,
And opens to the obstinate praying thing.
8.
Were there but some deep, holy spell, whereby
Always I should remember thee--some mode
Of feeling the pure heat-throb momently
Of the spirit-fire still uttering this I!--
Lord, see thou to it, take thou remembrance' load:
Only when I bethink me can I cry;
Remember thou, and prick me with love's goad.
9.
If to myself--"God sometimes interferes"--
I said, my faith at once would be struck blind.
I see him all in all, the lifing mind,
Or nowhere in the vacant miles and years.
A love he is that watches and that hears,
Or but a mist fumed up from minds of men,
Whose fear and hope reach out beyond their ken.
10.
When I no more can stir my soul to move,
And life is but the ashes of a fire;
When I can but remember that my heart
Once used to live and love, long and aspire,--
Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art;
Be thou the calling, before all answering love,
And in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.
11.
I thought that I had lost thee; but, behold!
|
Thou comest to me from the horizon low,
Across the fields outspread of green and gold--
Fair carpet for thy feet to come and go.
Whence I know not, or how to me thou art come!--
Not less my spirit with calm bliss doth glow,
Meeting thee only thus, in nature vague and dumb.
12.
Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind!
My soul in storm is but a tattered sail,
Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale;
In calm, 'tis but a limp and flapping thing:
Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wing,--
To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind
Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find.
13.
The idle flapping of the sail is doubt;
Faith swells it full to breast the breasting seas.
Bold, conscience, fast, and rule the ruling helm;
Hell's freezing north no tempest can send out,
But it shall toss thee homeward to thy leas;
Boisterous wave-crest never shall o'erwhelm
Thy sea-float bark as safe as field-borne rooted elm.
14.
Sometimes, hard-trying, it seems I cannot pray--
For doubt, and pain, and anger, and all strife.
Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from the nest
May fall, flit, fly, perch--crouch in the bowery breast
Of the large, nation-healing tree of life;--
Moveless there sit through all the burning day,
And on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay.
15.
My harvest withers. Health, my means to live--
All things seem rushing straight into the dark.
But the dark still is God. I would not give
The smallest silver-piece to turn the rush
Backward or sideways. Am I not a spark
Of him who is the light?--Fair hope doth flush
My east.--Divine success--Oh, hush and hark!
16.
Thy will be done. I yield up everything.
"The life is more than meat"--then more than health;
"The body more than raiment"--then than wealth;
The hairs I made not, thou art numbering.
Thou art my life--I the brook, thou the spring.
Because thine eyes are open, I can see;
Because thou art thyself, 'tis therefore I am me.
17.
No sickness can come near to blast my health;
My life depends not upon any meat;
My bread comes not from any human tilth;
No wings will grow upon my changeless wealth;
Wrong cannot touch it, violence or deceit;
Thou art my life, my health, my bank, my barn--
And from all other gods thou plain dost warn.
18.
Care thou for mine whom I must leave behind;
Care that they know who 'tis for them takes care;
Thy present patience help them still to bear;
Lord, keep them clearing, growing, heart and mind;
In one thy oneness us together bind;
Last earthly prayer with which to thee I cling--
Grant that, save love, we owe not anything.
19.
'Tis well, for unembodied thought a live,
True house to build--of stubble, wood, nor hay;
So, like bees round the flower by which they thrive,
My thoughts are busy with the informing truth,
And as I build, I feed, and grow in youth--
Hoping to stand fresh, clean, and strong, and gay,
When up the east comes dawning His great day.
20.
Thy will is truth--'tis therefore fate, the strong.
Would that my will did sweep full swing with thine!
Then harmony with every spheric song,
And conscious power, would give sureness divine.
Who thinks to thread thy great laws' onward throng,
Is as a fly that creeps his foolish way
Athwart an engine's wheels in smooth resistless play.
21.
Thou in my heart hast planted, gardener divine,
A scion of the tree of life: it grows;
But not in every wind or weather it blows;
The leaves fall sometimes from the baby tree,
And the life-power seems melting into pine;
Yet still the sap keeps struggling to the shine,
And the unseen root clings cramplike unto thee.
22.
Do thou, my God, my spirit's weather control;
And as I do not gloom though the day be dun,
Let me not gloom when earth-born vapours roll
Across the infinite zenith of my soul.
Should sudden brain-frost through the heart's summer run,
Cold, weary, joyless, waste of air and sun,
Thou art my south, my summer-wind, my all, my one.
23.
O Life, why dost thou close me up in death?
O Health, why make me inhabit heaviness?--
I ask, yet know: the sum of this distress,
Pang-haunted body, sore-dismayed mind,
Is but the egg that rounds the winged faith;
When that its path into the air shall find,
My heart will follow, high above cold, rain, and wind.
24.
I can no more than lift my weary eyes;
Therefore I lift my weary eyes--no more.
But my eyes pull my heart, and that, before
'Tis well awake, knocks where the conscience lies;
Conscience runs quick to the spirit's hidden door:
Straightway, from every sky-ward window, cries
Up to the Father's listening ears arise.
25.
Not in my fancy now I search to find thee;
Not in its loftiest forms would shape or bind thee;
I cry to one whom I can never know,
Filling me with an infinite overflow;
Not to a shape that dwells within my heart,
Clothed in perfections love and truth assigned thee,
But to the God thou knowest that thou art.
26.
Not, Lord, because I have done well or ill;
Not that my mind looks up to thee clear-eyed;
Not that it struggles in fast cerements tied;
Not that I need thee daily sorer still;
Not that I wretched, wander from thy will;
Not now for any cause to thee I cry,
But this, that thou art thou, and here am I.
27.
Yestereve, Death came, and knocked at my thin door.
I from my window looked: the thing I saw,
The shape uncouth, I had not seen before.
I was disturbed--with fear, in sooth, not awe;
Whereof ashamed, I instantly did rouse
My will to seek thee--only to fear the more:
Alas! I could not find thee in the house.
28.
I was like Peter when he began to sink.
To thee a new prayer therefore I have got--
That, when Death comes in earnest to my door,
Thou wouldst thyself go, when the latch doth clink,
And lead him to my room, up to my cot;
Then hold thy child's hand, hold and leave him not,
Till Death has done with him for evermore.
29.
Till Death has done with him?--Ah, leave me then!
And Death has done with me, oh, nevermore!
He comes--and goes--to leave me in thy arms,
Nearer thy heart, oh, nearer than before!
To lay thy child, naked, new-born again
Of mother earth, crept free through many harms,
Upon thy bosom--still to the very core.
30.
Come to me, Lord: I will not speculate how,
Nor think at which door I would have thee appear,
Nor put off calling till my floors be swept,
But cry, "Come, Lord, come any way, come now."
Doors, windows, I throw wide; my head I bow,
And sit like some one who so long has slept
That he knows nothing till his life draw near.
31.
O Lord, I have been talking to the people;
Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone,
And the recoil of my words' airy ripple
My heart unheedful has puffed up and blown.
Therefore I cast myself before thee prone:
Lay cool hands on my burning brain, and press
From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.
|
free_verse
|
Robert Burns
|
Written On The Blank Leaf Of A Copy Of My Poems, Presented To An Old Sweetheart, Then Married.
|
Once fondly lov'd and still remember'd dear;
Sweet early object of my youthful vows!
Accept this mark of friendship, warm, sincere,
Friendship! 'tis all cold duty now allows.
And when you read the simple artless rhymes,
One friendly sigh for him, he asks no more,
Who distant burns in flaming torrid climes,
Or haply lies beneath th' Atlantic roar.
|
Once fondly lov'd and still remember'd dear;
Sweet early object of my youthful vows!
|
Accept this mark of friendship, warm, sincere,
Friendship! 'tis all cold duty now allows.
And when you read the simple artless rhymes,
One friendly sigh for him, he asks no more,
Who distant burns in flaming torrid climes,
Or haply lies beneath th' Atlantic roar.
|
octave
|
William Shakespeare
|
The Sonnets XXV - Let those who are in favour with their stars
|
Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars
Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread
But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd:
Then happy I, that love and am belov'd,
Where I may not remove nor be remov'd.
|
Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars
Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.
|
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread
But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd:
Then happy I, that love and am belov'd,
Where I may not remove nor be remov'd.
|
sonnet
|
Unknown
|
Nursery Rhyme. DV. Natural History.
|
Some little mice sat in a barn to spin;
Pussy came by, and popped her head in;
"Shall I come in, and cut your threads off?"
"Oh! no, kind sir, you will snap our heads off!"
|
Some little mice sat in a barn to spin;
|
Pussy came by, and popped her head in;
"Shall I come in, and cut your threads off?"
"Oh! no, kind sir, you will snap our heads off!"
|
quatrain
|
William Wordsworth
|
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XXI. - On Hearing The "Ranz Des Vaches" On The Top Of The Pass Of St. Gothard
|
I listen, but no faculty of mine
Avails those modulations to detect,
Which, heard in foreign lands, the Swiss affect
With tenderest passion; leaving him to pine
(So fame reports) and die, his sweet-breathed kine
Remembering, and green Alpine pastures decked
With vernal flowers. Yet may we not reject
The tale as fabulous. Here while I recline,
Mindful how others by this simple Strain
Are moved, for me upon this Mountain named
Of God himself from dread pre-eminence,
Aspiring thoughts, by memory reclaimed,
Yield to the Music's touching influence;
And joys of distant home my heart enchain.
|
I listen, but no faculty of mine
Avails those modulations to detect,
Which, heard in foreign lands, the Swiss affect
With tenderest passion; leaving him to pine
|
(So fame reports) and die, his sweet-breathed kine
Remembering, and green Alpine pastures decked
With vernal flowers. Yet may we not reject
The tale as fabulous. Here while I recline,
Mindful how others by this simple Strain
Are moved, for me upon this Mountain named
Of God himself from dread pre-eminence,
Aspiring thoughts, by memory reclaimed,
Yield to the Music's touching influence;
And joys of distant home my heart enchain.
|
sonnet
|
Robert Herrick
|
Upon Nodes.
|
Wherever Nodes does in the summer come,
He prays his harvest may be well brought home.
What store of corn has careful Nodes, think you,
Whose field his foot is, and whose barn his shoe?
|
Wherever Nodes does in the summer come,
|
He prays his harvest may be well brought home.
What store of corn has careful Nodes, think you,
Whose field his foot is, and whose barn his shoe?
|
quatrain
|
Unknown
|
Nursery Rhyme. CCCXCIII. Lullabies.
|
Hush-a-bye, a ba lamb,
Hush-a-bye a milk cow,
You shall have a little stick
To beat the naughty bow-wow.
|
Hush-a-bye, a ba lamb,
|
Hush-a-bye a milk cow,
You shall have a little stick
To beat the naughty bow-wow.
|
quatrain
|
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
|
Song
|
Tho' veiled in spires of myrtle-wreath,
Love is a sword that cuts its sheath,
And thro' the clefts, itself has made,
We spy the flashes of the Blade!
But thro' the clefts, itself has made,
We likewise see Love's flashing blade,
By rust consumed or snapt in twain:
And only Hilt and Stump remain.
|
Tho' veiled in spires of myrtle-wreath,
Love is a sword that cuts its sheath,
|
And thro' the clefts, itself has made,
We spy the flashes of the Blade!
But thro' the clefts, itself has made,
We likewise see Love's flashing blade,
By rust consumed or snapt in twain:
And only Hilt and Stump remain.
|
octave
|
Michael Drayton
|
Amour 22
|
My hart, imprisoned in a hopeless Ile,
Peopled with Armies of pale iealous eyes,
The shores beset with thousand secret spyes,
Must passe by ayre, or else dye in exile.
He framd him wings with feathers of his thought,
Which by theyr nature learn'd to mount the skye;
And with the same he practised to flye,
Till he himself thys Eagles art had taught.
Thus soring still, not looking once below,
So neere thyne eyes celesteall sunne aspyred,
That with the rayes his wafting pyneons fired:
Thus was the wanton cause of his owne woe.
Downe fell he, in thy Beauties Ocean drenched,
Yet there he burnes in fire thats neuer quenched.
|
My hart, imprisoned in a hopeless Ile,
Peopled with Armies of pale iealous eyes,
The shores beset with thousand secret spyes,
Must passe by ayre, or else dye in exile.
|
He framd him wings with feathers of his thought,
Which by theyr nature learn'd to mount the skye;
And with the same he practised to flye,
Till he himself thys Eagles art had taught.
Thus soring still, not looking once below,
So neere thyne eyes celesteall sunne aspyred,
That with the rayes his wafting pyneons fired:
Thus was the wanton cause of his owne woe.
Downe fell he, in thy Beauties Ocean drenched,
Yet there he burnes in fire thats neuer quenched.
|
sonnet
|
Victor James Daley
|
St Francis II
|
I learnt the language of the birds,
A new St Francis I would be;
But, when I understood their words,
The birds were preaching unto me.
|
I learnt the language of the birds,
|
A new St Francis I would be;
But, when I understood their words,
The birds were preaching unto me.
|
quatrain
|
Alfred Lord Tennyson
|
To The Rev. W.H. Brookfield
|
Brooks, for they call'd you so that knew you best,
Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes,
How oft we two have heard St. Mary's chimes!
How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest,
Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!
How oft with him we paced that walk of limes,
Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times,
Who loved you well! Now both are gone to rest.
You man of humorous-melancholy mark,
Dead of some inward agony-is it so?
Our kindlier, trustier Jaques, past away
I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark
????? ????-dream of a shadow, go-
God bless you. I shall join you in a day.
|
Brooks, for they call'd you so that knew you best,
Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes,
How oft we two have heard St. Mary's chimes!
How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest,
|
Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!
How oft with him we paced that walk of limes,
Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times,
Who loved you well! Now both are gone to rest.
You man of humorous-melancholy mark,
Dead of some inward agony-is it so?
Our kindlier, trustier Jaques, past away
I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark
????? ????-dream of a shadow, go-
God bless you. I shall join you in a day.
|
sonnet
|
William Butler Yeats
|
The Poet Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends
|
Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time's bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes.
|
Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
|
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time's bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes.
|
octave
|
Adam Lindsay Gordon
|
Finis Exoptatus - A Metaphysical Song
|
'There's something in this world amiss
Shall be unriddled by-and-bye.'
- Tennyson.
Boot and saddle, see, the slanting
Rays begin to fall,
Flinging lights and colours flaunting
Through the shadows tall.
Onward! onward! must we travel?
When will come the goal?
Riddle I may not unravel,
Cease to vex my soul.
Harshly break those peals of laughter
From the jays aloft,
Can we guess what they cry after?
We have heard them oft;
Perhaps some strain of rude thanksgiving
Mingles in their song,
Are they glad that they are living?
Are they right or wrong?
Right, 'tis joy that makes them call so,
Why should they be sad?
Certes! we are living also,
Shall not we be glad?
Onward! onward! must we travel?
Is the goal more near?
Riddle we may not unravel,
Why so dark and drear?
Yon small bird his hymn outpouring,
On the branch close by,
Recks not for the kestrel soaring
In the nether sky,
Though the hawk with wings extended
Poises over head,
Motionless as though suspended
By a viewless thread.
See, he stoops, nay, shooting forward
With the arrow's flight,
Swift and straight away to nor'ward
Sails he out of sight.
Onward! onward! thus we travel,
Comes the goal more nigh?
Riddle we may not unravel,
Who shall make reply?
Ha! Friend Ephraim, saint or sinner,
Tell me if you can,
Tho' we may not judge the inner,
By the outer man,
Yet by girth of broadcloth ample,
And by cheeks that shine,
Surely you set no example
In the fasting line,
Could you, like yon bird, discov'ring,
Fate as close at hand,
As the kestrel o'er him hov'ring,
Still, as he did, stand?
Trusting grandly, singing gaily,
Confident and calm,
Not one false note in your daily
Hymn or weekly psalm?
Oft your oily tones are heard in
Chapel, where you preach,
This the everlasting burden
Of the tale you teach:
'We are d--d, our sins are deadly,
You alone are heal'd',
'Twas not thus their gospel redly
Saints and martyrs seal'd.
You had seem'd more like a martyr,
Than you seem to us,
To the beasts that caught a Tartar
Once at Ephesus;
Rather than the stout apostle
Of the Gentiles, who,
Pagan-like, could cuff and wrestle,
They'd have chosen you.
Yet, I ween, on such occasion,
Your dissenting voice
Would have been, in mild persuasion,
Raised against their choice;
Man of peace, and man of merit,
Pompous, wise, and grave,
Ephraim! is it flesh or spirit
You strive most to save?
Vain is half this care and caution
O'er the earthly shell,
We can neither baffle nor shun
Dark plumed Azrael.
Onward! onward! still we wander,
Nearer draws the goal;
Half the riddle's read, we ponder
Vainly on the whole.
Eastward! in the pink horizon,
Fleecy hillocks shame
This dim range dull earth that lies on,
Tinged with rosy flame.
Westward! as a stricken giant
Stoops his bloody crest,
And tho' vanquished, frowns defiant,
Sinks the sun to rest.
Distant, yet approaching quickly,
From the shades that lurk,
Like a black pall gathers thickly,
Night, when none may work.
Soon our restless occupation
Shall have ceas'd to be;
Units! in God's vast creation,
Ciphers! what are we?
Onward! onward! oh! faint-hearted;
Nearer and more near
Has the goal drawn since we started,
Be of better cheer.
Preacher! all forbearance ask, for
All are worthless found,
Man must aye take man to task for
Faults while earth goes round.
On this dank soil thistles muster,
Thorns are broadcast sown;
Seek not figs where thistles cluster,
Grapes where thorns have grown.
Sun and rain and dew from heaven,
Light and shade and air,
Heat and moisture freely given,
Thorns and thistles share.
Vegetation rank and rotten
Feels the cheering ray;
Not uncared for, unforgotten,
We, too, have our day.
Unforgotten! though we cumber
Earth we work His will.
Shall we sleep through night's long slumber
Unforgotten still?
Onward! onward! toiling ever,
Weary steps and slow,
Doubting oft, despairing never,
To the goal we go!
Hark! the bells on distant cattle
Waft across the range;
Through the golden-tufted wattle,
Music low and strange;
Like the marriage peal of fairies
Comes the tinkling sound,
Or like chimes of sweet St. Mary's
On far English ground.
How my courser champs the snaffle,
And with nostril spread,
Snorts and scarcely seems to ruffle
Fern leaves with his tread;
Cool and pleasant on his haunches
Blows the evening breeze,
Through the overhanging branches
Of the wattle trees:
Onward! to the Southern Ocean,
Glides the breath of Spring.
Onward! with a dreary motion,
I, too, glide and sing,
Forward! forward! still we wander,
Tinted hills that lie
In the red horizon yonder,
Is the goal so nigh?
Whisper, spring-wind, softly singing,
Whisper in my ear;
Respite and nepenthe bringing,
Can the goal be near?
Laden with the dew of vespers,
From the fragrant sky,
In my ear the wind that whispers
Seems to make reply,
'Question not, but live and labour
Till yon goal be won,
Helping every feeble neighbour,
Seeking help from none;
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.'
Courage, comrades, this is certain,
All is for the best,
There are lights behind the curtain,
Gentiles, let us rest.
As the smoke-rack veers to seaward,
From 'the ancient clay',
With its moral drifting leeward,
Ends the wanderer's lay.
|
'There's something in this world amiss
Shall be unriddled by-and-bye.'
- Tennyson.
Boot and saddle, see, the slanting
Rays begin to fall,
Flinging lights and colours flaunting
Through the shadows tall.
Onward! onward! must we travel?
When will come the goal?
Riddle I may not unravel,
Cease to vex my soul.
Harshly break those peals of laughter
From the jays aloft,
Can we guess what they cry after?
We have heard them oft;
Perhaps some strain of rude thanksgiving
Mingles in their song,
Are they glad that they are living?
Are they right or wrong?
Right, 'tis joy that makes them call so,
Why should they be sad?
Certes! we are living also,
Shall not we be glad?
Onward! onward! must we travel?
Is the goal more near?
Riddle we may not unravel,
Why so dark and drear?
Yon small bird his hymn outpouring,
On the branch close by,
Recks not for the kestrel soaring
In the nether sky,
Though the hawk with wings extended
Poises over head,
Motionless as though suspended
By a viewless thread.
See, he stoops, nay, shooting forward
With the arrow's flight,
Swift and straight away to nor'ward
Sails he out of sight.
Onward! onward! thus we travel,
Comes the goal more nigh?
Riddle we may not unravel,
Who shall make reply?
Ha! Friend Ephraim, saint or sinner,
Tell me if you can,
Tho' we may not judge the inner,
By the outer man,
Yet by girth of broadcloth ample,
And by cheeks that shine,
Surely you set no example
In the fasting line,
Could you, like yon bird, discov'ring,
Fate as close at hand,
As the kestrel o'er him hov'ring,
Still, as he did, stand?
Trusting grandly, singing gaily,
Confident and calm,
Not one false note in your daily
Hymn or weekly psalm?
Oft your oily tones are heard in
Chapel, where you preach,
|
This the everlasting burden
Of the tale you teach:
'We are d--d, our sins are deadly,
You alone are heal'd',
'Twas not thus their gospel redly
Saints and martyrs seal'd.
You had seem'd more like a martyr,
Than you seem to us,
To the beasts that caught a Tartar
Once at Ephesus;
Rather than the stout apostle
Of the Gentiles, who,
Pagan-like, could cuff and wrestle,
They'd have chosen you.
Yet, I ween, on such occasion,
Your dissenting voice
Would have been, in mild persuasion,
Raised against their choice;
Man of peace, and man of merit,
Pompous, wise, and grave,
Ephraim! is it flesh or spirit
You strive most to save?
Vain is half this care and caution
O'er the earthly shell,
We can neither baffle nor shun
Dark plumed Azrael.
Onward! onward! still we wander,
Nearer draws the goal;
Half the riddle's read, we ponder
Vainly on the whole.
Eastward! in the pink horizon,
Fleecy hillocks shame
This dim range dull earth that lies on,
Tinged with rosy flame.
Westward! as a stricken giant
Stoops his bloody crest,
And tho' vanquished, frowns defiant,
Sinks the sun to rest.
Distant, yet approaching quickly,
From the shades that lurk,
Like a black pall gathers thickly,
Night, when none may work.
Soon our restless occupation
Shall have ceas'd to be;
Units! in God's vast creation,
Ciphers! what are we?
Onward! onward! oh! faint-hearted;
Nearer and more near
Has the goal drawn since we started,
Be of better cheer.
Preacher! all forbearance ask, for
All are worthless found,
Man must aye take man to task for
Faults while earth goes round.
On this dank soil thistles muster,
Thorns are broadcast sown;
Seek not figs where thistles cluster,
Grapes where thorns have grown.
Sun and rain and dew from heaven,
Light and shade and air,
Heat and moisture freely given,
Thorns and thistles share.
Vegetation rank and rotten
Feels the cheering ray;
Not uncared for, unforgotten,
We, too, have our day.
Unforgotten! though we cumber
Earth we work His will.
Shall we sleep through night's long slumber
Unforgotten still?
Onward! onward! toiling ever,
Weary steps and slow,
Doubting oft, despairing never,
To the goal we go!
Hark! the bells on distant cattle
Waft across the range;
Through the golden-tufted wattle,
Music low and strange;
Like the marriage peal of fairies
Comes the tinkling sound,
Or like chimes of sweet St. Mary's
On far English ground.
How my courser champs the snaffle,
And with nostril spread,
Snorts and scarcely seems to ruffle
Fern leaves with his tread;
Cool and pleasant on his haunches
Blows the evening breeze,
Through the overhanging branches
Of the wattle trees:
Onward! to the Southern Ocean,
Glides the breath of Spring.
Onward! with a dreary motion,
I, too, glide and sing,
Forward! forward! still we wander,
Tinted hills that lie
In the red horizon yonder,
Is the goal so nigh?
Whisper, spring-wind, softly singing,
Whisper in my ear;
Respite and nepenthe bringing,
Can the goal be near?
Laden with the dew of vespers,
From the fragrant sky,
In my ear the wind that whispers
Seems to make reply,
'Question not, but live and labour
Till yon goal be won,
Helping every feeble neighbour,
Seeking help from none;
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.'
Courage, comrades, this is certain,
All is for the best,
There are lights behind the curtain,
Gentiles, let us rest.
As the smoke-rack veers to seaward,
From 'the ancient clay',
With its moral drifting leeward,
Ends the wanderer's lay.
|
free_verse
|
John Clare
|
Snow Storm
|
What a night! The wind howls, hisses, and but stops
To howl more loud, while the snow volley keeps
Incessant batter at the window pane,
Making our comfort feel as sweet again;
And in the morning, when the tempest drops,
At every cottage door mountainous heaps
Of snow lie drifted, that all entrance stops
Untill the beesom and the shovel gain
The path, and leave a wall on either side.
The shepherd rambling valleys white and wide
With new sensations his old memory fills,
When hedges left at night, no more descried,
Are turned to one white sweep of curving hills,
And trees turned bushes half their bodies hide.
The boy that goes to fodder with surprise
Walks oer the gate he opened yesternight.
The hedges all have vanished from his eyes;
Een some tree tops the sheep could reach to bite.
The novel scene emboldens new delight,
And, though with cautious steps his sports begin,
He bolder shuffles the huge hills of snow,
Till down he drops and plunges to the chin,
And struggles much and oft escape to win--
Then turns and laughs but dare not further go;
For deep the grass and bushes lie below,
Where little birds that soon at eve went in
With heads tucked in their wings now pine for day
And little feel boys oer their heads can stray.
|
What a night! The wind howls, hisses, and but stops
To howl more loud, while the snow volley keeps
Incessant batter at the window pane,
Making our comfort feel as sweet again;
And in the morning, when the tempest drops,
At every cottage door mountainous heaps
Of snow lie drifted, that all entrance stops
Untill the beesom and the shovel gain
The path, and leave a wall on either side.
|
The shepherd rambling valleys white and wide
With new sensations his old memory fills,
When hedges left at night, no more descried,
Are turned to one white sweep of curving hills,
And trees turned bushes half their bodies hide.
The boy that goes to fodder with surprise
Walks oer the gate he opened yesternight.
The hedges all have vanished from his eyes;
Een some tree tops the sheep could reach to bite.
The novel scene emboldens new delight,
And, though with cautious steps his sports begin,
He bolder shuffles the huge hills of snow,
Till down he drops and plunges to the chin,
And struggles much and oft escape to win--
Then turns and laughs but dare not further go;
For deep the grass and bushes lie below,
Where little birds that soon at eve went in
With heads tucked in their wings now pine for day
And little feel boys oer their heads can stray.
|
free_verse
|
Jean de La Fontaine
|
The Cat And The Old Rat.
|
[1]
A story-writer of our sort
Historifies, in short,
Of one that may be reckon'd
A Rodilard the Second, - [2]
The Alexander of the cats,
The Attila,[3] the scourge of rats,
Whose fierce and whisker'd head
Among the latter spread,
A league around, its dread;
Who seem'd, indeed, determined
The world should be unvermined.
The planks with props more false than slim,
The tempting heaps of poison'd meal,
The traps of wire and traps of steel,
Were only play compared with him.
At length, so sadly were they scared.
The rats and mice no longer dared
To show their thievish faces
Outside their hiding-places,
Thus shunning all pursuit; whereat
Our crafty General Cat
Contrived to hang himself, as dead,
Beside the wall with downward head,
Resisting gravitation's laws
By clinging with his hinder claws
To some small bit of string.
The rats esteem'd the thing
A judgment for some naughty deed,
Some thievish snatch,
Or ugly scratch;
And thought their foe had got his meed
By being hung indeed.
With hope elated all
Of laughing at his funeral,
They thrust their noses out in air;
And now to show their heads they dare;
Now dodging back, now venturing more;
At last upon the larder's store
They fall to filching, as of yore.
A scanty feast enjoy'd these shallows;
Down dropp'd the hung one from his gallows,
And of the hindmost caught.
'Some other tricks to me are known,'
Said he, while tearing bone from bone,
'By long experience taught;
The point is settled, free from doubt,
That from your holes you shall come out.'
His threat as good as prophecy
Was proved by Mr. Mildandsly;
For, putting on a mealy robe,
He squatted in an open tub,
And held his purring and his breath; -
Out came the vermin to their death.
On this occasion, one old stager,
A rat as grey as any badger,
Who had in battle lost his tail,
Abstained from smelling at the meal;
And cried, far off, 'Ah! General Cat,
I much suspect a heap like that;
Your meal is not the thing, perhaps,
For one who knows somewhat of traps;
Should you a sack of meal become,
I'd let you be, and stay at home.'
Well said, I think, and prudently,
By one who knew distrust to be
The parent of security.
|
[1]
A story-writer of our sort
Historifies, in short,
Of one that may be reckon'd
A Rodilard the Second, - [2]
The Alexander of the cats,
The Attila,[3] the scourge of rats,
Whose fierce and whisker'd head
Among the latter spread,
A league around, its dread;
Who seem'd, indeed, determined
The world should be unvermined.
The planks with props more false than slim,
The tempting heaps of poison'd meal,
The traps of wire and traps of steel,
Were only play compared with him.
At length, so sadly were they scared.
The rats and mice no longer dared
To show their thievish faces
Outside their hiding-places,
Thus shunning all pursuit; whereat
Our crafty General Cat
|
Contrived to hang himself, as dead,
Beside the wall with downward head,
Resisting gravitation's laws
By clinging with his hinder claws
To some small bit of string.
The rats esteem'd the thing
A judgment for some naughty deed,
Some thievish snatch,
Or ugly scratch;
And thought their foe had got his meed
By being hung indeed.
With hope elated all
Of laughing at his funeral,
They thrust their noses out in air;
And now to show their heads they dare;
Now dodging back, now venturing more;
At last upon the larder's store
They fall to filching, as of yore.
A scanty feast enjoy'd these shallows;
Down dropp'd the hung one from his gallows,
And of the hindmost caught.
'Some other tricks to me are known,'
Said he, while tearing bone from bone,
'By long experience taught;
The point is settled, free from doubt,
That from your holes you shall come out.'
His threat as good as prophecy
Was proved by Mr. Mildandsly;
For, putting on a mealy robe,
He squatted in an open tub,
And held his purring and his breath; -
Out came the vermin to their death.
On this occasion, one old stager,
A rat as grey as any badger,
Who had in battle lost his tail,
Abstained from smelling at the meal;
And cried, far off, 'Ah! General Cat,
I much suspect a heap like that;
Your meal is not the thing, perhaps,
For one who knows somewhat of traps;
Should you a sack of meal become,
I'd let you be, and stay at home.'
Well said, I think, and prudently,
By one who knew distrust to be
The parent of security.
|
free_verse
|
Philip Sidney (Sir)
|
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XCII
|
Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware,
That you allow me them by so small rate?
Or do you curtted Spartanes imitate?
Or do you meane my tender eares to spare,
That to my questions you so totall are?
When I demaund of Phoenix-Stellas state,
You say, forsooth, you left her well of late:
O God, thinke you that satisfies my care?
I would know whether she did sit or walke;
How cloth'd; how waited on; sigh'd she, or smilde
Whereof, with whom, how often did she talke;
With what pastimes Times iourney she beguilde;
If her lips daignd to sweeten my poore name.
Saie all; and all well sayd, still say the same.
|
Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware,
That you allow me them by so small rate?
Or do you curtted Spartanes imitate?
Or do you meane my tender eares to spare,
|
That to my questions you so totall are?
When I demaund of Phoenix-Stellas state,
You say, forsooth, you left her well of late:
O God, thinke you that satisfies my care?
I would know whether she did sit or walke;
How cloth'd; how waited on; sigh'd she, or smilde
Whereof, with whom, how often did she talke;
With what pastimes Times iourney she beguilde;
If her lips daignd to sweeten my poore name.
Saie all; and all well sayd, still say the same.
|
sonnet
|
Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)
|
To Mrs. Irving,
|
I dedicate these verses to one whom I hold dear,
One who in the dark days drew in Christian kindness near
May He who led me all my life do so and more to me
If ever I forget the debt of love I owe to thee.
|
I dedicate these verses to one whom I hold dear,
|
One who in the dark days drew in Christian kindness near
May He who led me all my life do so and more to me
If ever I forget the debt of love I owe to thee.
|
quatrain
|
Michael Drayton
|
Sonnets: Idea XXX To The Vestals
|
Those priests which first the vestal fire begun,
Which might be borrowed from no earthly flame,
Devised a vessel to receive the sun,
Being stedfastly oppos'd to the same;
Where with sweet wood laid curiously by art,
On which the sun might by reflection beat,
Receiving strength for every secret part,
The fuel kindled with celestial heat.
Thy bless'd eyes, the sun which lights this fire,
My holy thoughts, they be the vestal flame,
Thy precious odours be my chaste desires,
My breast's the vessel which includes the same;
Thou art my Vesta, thou my goddess art,
Thy hallowed temple only is my heart.
|
Those priests which first the vestal fire begun,
Which might be borrowed from no earthly flame,
Devised a vessel to receive the sun,
Being stedfastly oppos'd to the same;
|
Where with sweet wood laid curiously by art,
On which the sun might by reflection beat,
Receiving strength for every secret part,
The fuel kindled with celestial heat.
Thy bless'd eyes, the sun which lights this fire,
My holy thoughts, they be the vestal flame,
Thy precious odours be my chaste desires,
My breast's the vessel which includes the same;
Thou art my Vesta, thou my goddess art,
Thy hallowed temple only is my heart.
|
sonnet
|
Oliver Herford
|
David Belasco
|
Behold Belasco in his den,
Wielding the scissors, paste and pen,
And writing with consummate skill
A play by W. De Mille.
|
Behold Belasco in his den,
|
Wielding the scissors, paste and pen,
And writing with consummate skill
A play by W. De Mille.
|
quatrain
|
Robert Fuller Murray
|
The First Meeting
|
Last night for the first time, O Heart's Delight,
I held your hand a moment in my own,
The dearest moment which my soul has known,
Since I beheld and loved you at first sight.
I left you, and I wandered in the night,
Under the rain, beside the ocean's moan.
All was black dark, but in the north alone
There was a glimmer of the Northern Light.
My heart was singing like a happy bird,
Glad of the present, and from forethought free,
Save for one note amid its music heard:
God grant, whatever end of this may be,
That when the tale is told, the final word
May be of peace and benison to thee.
|
Last night for the first time, O Heart's Delight,
I held your hand a moment in my own,
The dearest moment which my soul has known,
Since I beheld and loved you at first sight.
|
I left you, and I wandered in the night,
Under the rain, beside the ocean's moan.
All was black dark, but in the north alone
There was a glimmer of the Northern Light.
My heart was singing like a happy bird,
Glad of the present, and from forethought free,
Save for one note amid its music heard:
God grant, whatever end of this may be,
That when the tale is told, the final word
May be of peace and benison to thee.
|
sonnet
|
Clark Ashton Smith
|
The Cherry-Snows
|
The cherry-snows are falling now;
Down from the blossom-clouded sky
Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough,
In widely settling whirls they fly.
The orchard earth, unclothed and brown,
Is wintry-hued with petals bright;
E'en as the snow they glimmer down;
Brief as the snow's their stainless white.
|
The cherry-snows are falling now;
Down from the blossom-clouded sky
|
Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough,
In widely settling whirls they fly.
The orchard earth, unclothed and brown,
Is wintry-hued with petals bright;
E'en as the snow they glimmer down;
Brief as the snow's their stainless white.
|
octave
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
The Walk
|
A Queen rejoices in her peers,
And wary Nature knows her own
By court and city, dale and down,
And like a lover volunteers,
And to her son will treasures more
And more to purpose freely pour
In one wood walk, than learned men
Can find with glass in ten times ten.
|
A Queen rejoices in her peers,
And wary Nature knows her own
|
By court and city, dale and down,
And like a lover volunteers,
And to her son will treasures more
And more to purpose freely pour
In one wood walk, than learned men
Can find with glass in ten times ten.
|
octave
|
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
|
Romney
|
Nay, Romney, nay - I will not hear you say
Those words again: "I love you, love you sweet!"
You are profane - blasphemous. I repeat,
You are no actor for so grand a play.
You love with all your heart? Well, that may be;
Some cups are fashioned shallow. Should I try
To quench my thirst from one of those, when dry -
I who have had a full bowl proffered me -
A new bowl brimming with a draught divine,
One single taste thrilled to the finger-tips?
Think you I even care to bathe my lips
With this poor sweetened water you call wine?
And though I spilled the nectar ere 'twas quaffed,
And broke the bowl in wanton folly, yet
I would die of my thirst ere I would wet
My burning lips with any meaner draught.
So leave me, Romney. One who has seen a play
Enacted by a star cannot endure
To see it rendered by an amateur.
You know not what Love is - now go away!
|
Nay, Romney, nay - I will not hear you say
Those words again: "I love you, love you sweet!"
You are profane - blasphemous. I repeat,
You are no actor for so grand a play.
You love with all your heart? Well, that may be;
Some cups are fashioned shallow. Should I try
|
To quench my thirst from one of those, when dry -
I who have had a full bowl proffered me -
A new bowl brimming with a draught divine,
One single taste thrilled to the finger-tips?
Think you I even care to bathe my lips
With this poor sweetened water you call wine?
And though I spilled the nectar ere 'twas quaffed,
And broke the bowl in wanton folly, yet
I would die of my thirst ere I would wet
My burning lips with any meaner draught.
So leave me, Romney. One who has seen a play
Enacted by a star cannot endure
To see it rendered by an amateur.
You know not what Love is - now go away!
|
free_verse
|
Alfred Edward Housman
|
Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - XXVII
|
"Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?"
Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
"Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?"
Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.
"Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?"
Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.
"Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?"
Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.
|
"Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?"
Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
"Is football playing
Along the river shore,
|
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?"
Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.
"Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?"
Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.
"Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?"
Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.
|
free_verse
|
Elizabeth Anderson
|
The Goblins' Christmas
|
The big bright Moon hung high and round,
In a densely darkened sky;
The tall pines swayed, and mocked, and groaned;
The mountains grew so high
That the Man-in-the-Moon came out and said,
"Ho! Spooks, for a merry dance."
The winds blow hard, the caverns roar,
While o'er the earth they prance.
A Witch and a Goblin led the sprites;
Out from the sky they sprung;
And down the milky way they slid,
And over a chasm swung.
The streams around ran witches' broth,
The fumes were strong and rank.
These Elfin creatures all were wroth,
While of the stuff they drank.
The cunning Moon looked on and laughed
With a shrill and sneering jibe;
Her soul grew fat to see them chaffed,
This mad and elfish tribe.
The big black caldron boiled so high
With food for these queer mites,
That it lit the world throughout the sky,
And down came all the Sprites.
Their mad career upset a star,
As through the air they flew:
It cringed in fear, and shot afar,
And fell where no one knew.
Orion's sword was broke in bits,
Corona's crown was gone,
Capella seemed to lose her wits,
While all so longed for dawn.
Then from the night there came a sound
Of sleigh-bells ringing sweet;
Out of the chaos came a man--
Kris Kringle--for his Christmas treat.
"Ho! Kris!" they cried, "We'll have some fun,
We'll bind the old man down,
We'll tie him up, and toss him o'er
Into our Goblin-town."
They climbed the sleigh with shout and din,
To bind his hands and feet;
A hundred strong they clambered in
Our good old Kris to meet.
He sat quite still, with twinkling eyes,
Then seized his mystic wand,
He raised it up, and waved it round
Stilled was this chattering band.
Stiffly stark and still they stood,
Clad in elfish clothes;
Some were wax, and some were wood,
One had crushed his nose.
"Playthings rare," he said and smiled,
"For children rich and poor;
Some I'll leave the crippled child,
And some at the orphan's door."
He shook his reins, and called his steed
To bear him swiftly on.
Full well it knew its Master's need
To hurry e'er the dawn.
From house to house they scampered down,
Their sleigh-bells ringing clear,
Through chimneys in the sleepy town--
Good Kris and his reindeer.
The windows rattled, the moonbeams tattled
A tale so strange and queer.
They told how at night, in dire affright
The Moon had hid in fear.
That he'd called in sport his elfish court
Of spooks and witches gay,
Each Elfin child, by glee beguiled,
Brought scores of others, they say.
Then a man appeared, with flowing beard,
In a sled with a reindeer fleet;
They gathered about with din and shout,
To bind him hands and feet.
Then the Moon laughed loud at the gathering crowd,
While he held his sides in mirth,
To see old Kris in a plight like this,
Toiling o'er the earth.
But alas for the Moon, he had laughed like a loon,
For Kris is a hero of old,
Yes, Kris is a seer; with his small reindeer,
He captured the Goblins bold.
And he changed them, they say in a wonderful way,
To toys, for his Christmas cheer.
The big dolls stare with a goblin air,
The small ones cringe with fear.
While the moonbeams prattle, I hear a rattle
Of hoofs on the chimney side;
Then out on the snow I gaze below,
"Hurrah! it's Kris Kringle," I cried.
Then, sly as a mouse, he entered the house,
And hung up his treasures so gay.
Then out with a dash, he sped like a flash,
Into the night, and away.
|
The big bright Moon hung high and round,
In a densely darkened sky;
The tall pines swayed, and mocked, and groaned;
The mountains grew so high
That the Man-in-the-Moon came out and said,
"Ho! Spooks, for a merry dance."
The winds blow hard, the caverns roar,
While o'er the earth they prance.
A Witch and a Goblin led the sprites;
Out from the sky they sprung;
And down the milky way they slid,
And over a chasm swung.
The streams around ran witches' broth,
The fumes were strong and rank.
These Elfin creatures all were wroth,
While of the stuff they drank.
The cunning Moon looked on and laughed
With a shrill and sneering jibe;
Her soul grew fat to see them chaffed,
This mad and elfish tribe.
The big black caldron boiled so high
With food for these queer mites,
That it lit the world throughout the sky,
And down came all the Sprites.
Their mad career upset a star,
As through the air they flew:
It cringed in fear, and shot afar,
And fell where no one knew.
Orion's sword was broke in bits,
Corona's crown was gone,
Capella seemed to lose her wits,
While all so longed for dawn.
|
Then from the night there came a sound
Of sleigh-bells ringing sweet;
Out of the chaos came a man--
Kris Kringle--for his Christmas treat.
"Ho! Kris!" they cried, "We'll have some fun,
We'll bind the old man down,
We'll tie him up, and toss him o'er
Into our Goblin-town."
They climbed the sleigh with shout and din,
To bind his hands and feet;
A hundred strong they clambered in
Our good old Kris to meet.
He sat quite still, with twinkling eyes,
Then seized his mystic wand,
He raised it up, and waved it round
Stilled was this chattering band.
Stiffly stark and still they stood,
Clad in elfish clothes;
Some were wax, and some were wood,
One had crushed his nose.
"Playthings rare," he said and smiled,
"For children rich and poor;
Some I'll leave the crippled child,
And some at the orphan's door."
He shook his reins, and called his steed
To bear him swiftly on.
Full well it knew its Master's need
To hurry e'er the dawn.
From house to house they scampered down,
Their sleigh-bells ringing clear,
Through chimneys in the sleepy town--
Good Kris and his reindeer.
The windows rattled, the moonbeams tattled
A tale so strange and queer.
They told how at night, in dire affright
The Moon had hid in fear.
That he'd called in sport his elfish court
Of spooks and witches gay,
Each Elfin child, by glee beguiled,
Brought scores of others, they say.
Then a man appeared, with flowing beard,
In a sled with a reindeer fleet;
They gathered about with din and shout,
To bind him hands and feet.
Then the Moon laughed loud at the gathering crowd,
While he held his sides in mirth,
To see old Kris in a plight like this,
Toiling o'er the earth.
But alas for the Moon, he had laughed like a loon,
For Kris is a hero of old,
Yes, Kris is a seer; with his small reindeer,
He captured the Goblins bold.
And he changed them, they say in a wonderful way,
To toys, for his Christmas cheer.
The big dolls stare with a goblin air,
The small ones cringe with fear.
While the moonbeams prattle, I hear a rattle
Of hoofs on the chimney side;
Then out on the snow I gaze below,
"Hurrah! it's Kris Kringle," I cried.
Then, sly as a mouse, he entered the house,
And hung up his treasures so gay.
Then out with a dash, he sped like a flash,
Into the night, and away.
|
free_verse
|
William Cowper
|
Epigram Printed In The Northampton Mercury.
|
To purify their wine, some people bleed
A lamb into the barrel, and succeed;
No nostrum, planters say, is half so good
To make fine sugar as a negro's blood.
Now lambs and negroes both are harmless things,
And thence perhaps this wondrous virtue springs,
'Tis in the blood of innocence alone'
Good cause why planters never try their own.
|
To purify their wine, some people bleed
A lamb into the barrel, and succeed;
|
No nostrum, planters say, is half so good
To make fine sugar as a negro's blood.
Now lambs and negroes both are harmless things,
And thence perhaps this wondrous virtue springs,
'Tis in the blood of innocence alone'
Good cause why planters never try their own.
|
octave
|
Walter R. Cassels
|
Serenade.
|
The day is fading from the sky,
And softly shines the Star of Even,
As watching with a lover's eye
The rest of Earth the peace of Heaven;
The dew is rising cool and sweet,
And, zephyr-rock'd, the flowers are closing,
The Night steals on with noiseless feet,
Oh! gentle be my love's reposing.
The streamlet, as it flows along,
Sounds like a voice 'mid childhood's slumbers;
And from the brake the Queen of Song
Pours forth her softest, clearest numbers;
And ever through the stirless leaves
The summer moon is brightly streaming,
Light fancies on the sward it weaves,--
As radiant be my lady's dreaming.
The silent hours move swiftly on,
With many a blessed vision laden,
That all the night has softly shone
Upon the hearts of youth and maiden;
And now, in golden splendors drest,
The new-born day is gladly breaking,
Oh! blissful be my lady's rest,
And sweet as Morn be her awaking.
|
The day is fading from the sky,
And softly shines the Star of Even,
As watching with a lover's eye
The rest of Earth the peace of Heaven;
The dew is rising cool and sweet,
And, zephyr-rock'd, the flowers are closing,
The Night steals on with noiseless feet,
Oh! gentle be my love's reposing.
|
The streamlet, as it flows along,
Sounds like a voice 'mid childhood's slumbers;
And from the brake the Queen of Song
Pours forth her softest, clearest numbers;
And ever through the stirless leaves
The summer moon is brightly streaming,
Light fancies on the sward it weaves,--
As radiant be my lady's dreaming.
The silent hours move swiftly on,
With many a blessed vision laden,
That all the night has softly shone
Upon the hearts of youth and maiden;
And now, in golden splendors drest,
The new-born day is gladly breaking,
Oh! blissful be my lady's rest,
And sweet as Morn be her awaking.
|
free_verse
|
Kate Greenaway
|
The Daisies.
|
You very fine Miss Molly,
What will the daisies say,
If you carry home so many
Of their little friends to-day?
Perhaps you take a sister,
Perhaps you take a brother,
Or two little daisies who
Were fond of one another.
|
You very fine Miss Molly,
What will the daisies say,
|
If you carry home so many
Of their little friends to-day?
Perhaps you take a sister,
Perhaps you take a brother,
Or two little daisies who
Were fond of one another.
|
octave
|
Yehuda Amichai
|
An Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion
|
An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
Both in their temporary failure.
Our two voices met above
The Sultan's Pool in the valley between us.
Neither of us wants the boy or the goat
To get caught in the wheels
Of the "Had Gadya" machine.
Afterward we found them among the bushes,
And our voices came back inside us
Laughing and crying.
Searching for a goat or for a child has always been
The beginning of a new religion in these mountains.
|
An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
Both in their temporary failure.
|
Our two voices met above
The Sultan's Pool in the valley between us.
Neither of us wants the boy or the goat
To get caught in the wheels
Of the "Had Gadya" machine.
Afterward we found them among the bushes,
And our voices came back inside us
Laughing and crying.
Searching for a goat or for a child has always been
The beginning of a new religion in these mountains.
|
sonnet
|
Louisa May Alcott
|
I Wish I Had A Quiet Tomb
|
"I wish I had a quiet tomb,
Beside a little rill;
Where birds, and bees, and butterflies,
Would sing upon the hill."
|
"I wish I had a quiet tomb,
|
Beside a little rill;
Where birds, and bees, and butterflies,
Would sing upon the hill."
|
quatrain
|
Robert Herrick
|
Pray And Prosper.
|
First offer incense, then thy field and meads
Shall smile and smell the better by thy beads.
The spangling dew, dredg'd o'er the grass, shall be
Turn'd all to mell and manna there for thee.
Butter of amber, cream, and wine, and oil
Shall run, as rivers, all throughout thy soil.
Would'st thou to sincere silver turn thy mould?
Pray once, twice pray, and turn thy ground to gold.
|
First offer incense, then thy field and meads
Shall smile and smell the better by thy beads.
|
The spangling dew, dredg'd o'er the grass, shall be
Turn'd all to mell and manna there for thee.
Butter of amber, cream, and wine, and oil
Shall run, as rivers, all throughout thy soil.
Would'st thou to sincere silver turn thy mould?
Pray once, twice pray, and turn thy ground to gold.
|
octave
|
Richard Hunter
|
The Cowboy.
|
There was a bold cowboy
Came out of the west;
Of all the bold riders,
This cowboy's the best.
The horse he brought with him
Will not run away;
But stands by the side of
His master all day.
|
There was a bold cowboy
Came out of the west;
|
Of all the bold riders,
This cowboy's the best.
The horse he brought with him
Will not run away;
But stands by the side of
His master all day.
|
octave
|
Robert Lee Frost
|
A Soldier
|
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an arc.
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;
They make us cringe for metal-point on stone.
But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.
|
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
|
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an arc.
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;
They make us cringe for metal-point on stone.
But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.
|
sonnet
|
Walter De La Mare
|
Five Eyes
|
In Hans' old Mill his three black cats
Watch the bins for the thieving rats.
Whisker and claw, they crouch in the night,
Their five eyes smouldering green and bright:
Squeaks from the flour sacks, squeaks from where
The cold wind stirs on the empty stair,
Squeaking and scampering, everywhere.
Then down they pounce, now in, now out,
At whisking tail, and sniffing snout;
While lean old Hans he snores away
Till peep of light at break of day;
Then up he climbs to his creaking mill,
Out come his cats all grey with meal -
Jekkel, and Jessup, and one-eyed Jill.
|
In Hans' old Mill his three black cats
Watch the bins for the thieving rats.
Whisker and claw, they crouch in the night,
Their five eyes smouldering green and bright:
|
Squeaks from the flour sacks, squeaks from where
The cold wind stirs on the empty stair,
Squeaking and scampering, everywhere.
Then down they pounce, now in, now out,
At whisking tail, and sniffing snout;
While lean old Hans he snores away
Till peep of light at break of day;
Then up he climbs to his creaking mill,
Out come his cats all grey with meal -
Jekkel, and Jessup, and one-eyed Jill.
|
sonnet
|
Adam Lindsay Gordon
|
Laudamus
|
The Lord shall slay or the Lord shall save!
He is righteous whether He save or slay,
Brother, give thanks for the gifts He gave,
Though the gifts He gave He hath taken away.
Shall we strive for that which is nothing? Nay.
Shall we hate each other for that which fled?
She is but a marvel of modelled clay,
And the smooth, clear white, and the soft, pure red,
That we coveted, shall endure no day.
Was it wise or well that I hated you
For the fruit that hung too high on the tree?
For the blossom out of our reach that grew,
Was it well or wise that you hated me?
My hate has flown, and your hate shall flee.
Let us veil our faces like children chid,
Can that violet orb we swore by see
Through that violet-vein'd, transparent lid?
Now the Lord forbid that this strife should be.
Would you knit the forehead or clench the fist,
For the curls that never were well caress'd,
For the red that never was fairly kiss'd,
For the white that never was fondly press'd?
Shall we nourish wrath while she lies at rest
Between us? Surely our wrath shall cease.
We would fain know better, the Lord knows best,
Is there peace between us? Yea, there is peace,
In the soul's release she at least is blest.
Let us thank the Lord for His bounties all,
For the brave old days of pleasure and pain,
When the world for both of us seem'd too small,
Though the love was void and the hate was vain,
Though the word was bitter between us twain,
And the bitter word was kin to the blow,
For her gloss and ripple of rich gold rain,
For her velvet crimson and satin snow,
Though we never shall know the old days again.
The Lord! His mercy is great, men say;
His wrath, men say, is a burning brand,
Let us praise Him whether He save or slay,
And above her body let hand join hand.
We shall meet, my friend, in the spirit land,
Will our strife renew? Nay, I dare not trust,
For the grim, great gulf that cannot be spann'd
Will divide us from her. The Lord is just,
She shall not be thrust where our spirits stand.
|
The Lord shall slay or the Lord shall save!
He is righteous whether He save or slay,
Brother, give thanks for the gifts He gave,
Though the gifts He gave He hath taken away.
Shall we strive for that which is nothing? Nay.
Shall we hate each other for that which fled?
She is but a marvel of modelled clay,
And the smooth, clear white, and the soft, pure red,
That we coveted, shall endure no day.
Was it wise or well that I hated you
For the fruit that hung too high on the tree?
For the blossom out of our reach that grew,
Was it well or wise that you hated me?
My hate has flown, and your hate shall flee.
Let us veil our faces like children chid,
|
Can that violet orb we swore by see
Through that violet-vein'd, transparent lid?
Now the Lord forbid that this strife should be.
Would you knit the forehead or clench the fist,
For the curls that never were well caress'd,
For the red that never was fairly kiss'd,
For the white that never was fondly press'd?
Shall we nourish wrath while she lies at rest
Between us? Surely our wrath shall cease.
We would fain know better, the Lord knows best,
Is there peace between us? Yea, there is peace,
In the soul's release she at least is blest.
Let us thank the Lord for His bounties all,
For the brave old days of pleasure and pain,
When the world for both of us seem'd too small,
Though the love was void and the hate was vain,
Though the word was bitter between us twain,
And the bitter word was kin to the blow,
For her gloss and ripple of rich gold rain,
For her velvet crimson and satin snow,
Though we never shall know the old days again.
The Lord! His mercy is great, men say;
His wrath, men say, is a burning brand,
Let us praise Him whether He save or slay,
And above her body let hand join hand.
We shall meet, my friend, in the spirit land,
Will our strife renew? Nay, I dare not trust,
For the grim, great gulf that cannot be spann'd
Will divide us from her. The Lord is just,
She shall not be thrust where our spirits stand.
|
free_verse
|
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
|
Seeking For Happiness
|
Seeking for happiness we must go slowly;
The road leads not down avenues of haste;
But often gently winds through by ways lowly,
Whose hidden pleasures are serene and chaste
Seeking for happiness we must take heed
Of simple joys that are not found in speed.
Eager for noon-time's large effulgent splendour,
Too oft we miss the beauty of the dawn,
Which tiptoes by us, evanescent, tender,
Its pure delights unrecognised till gone.
Seeking for happiness we needs must care
For all the little things that make life fair.
Dreaming of future pleasures and achievements
We must not let to-day starve at our door;
Nor wait till after losses and bereavements
Before we count the riches in our store.
Seeking for happiness we must prize this -
Not what will be, or was, but that which IS.
In simple pathways hand in hand with duty
(With faith and love, too, ever at her side),
May happiness be met in all her beauty
The while we search for her both far and wide.
Seeking for happiness we find the way
Doing the things we ought to do each day.
|
Seeking for happiness we must go slowly;
The road leads not down avenues of haste;
But often gently winds through by ways lowly,
Whose hidden pleasures are serene and chaste
Seeking for happiness we must take heed
Of simple joys that are not found in speed.
Eager for noon-time's large effulgent splendour,
Too oft we miss the beauty of the dawn,
|
Which tiptoes by us, evanescent, tender,
Its pure delights unrecognised till gone.
Seeking for happiness we needs must care
For all the little things that make life fair.
Dreaming of future pleasures and achievements
We must not let to-day starve at our door;
Nor wait till after losses and bereavements
Before we count the riches in our store.
Seeking for happiness we must prize this -
Not what will be, or was, but that which IS.
In simple pathways hand in hand with duty
(With faith and love, too, ever at her side),
May happiness be met in all her beauty
The while we search for her both far and wide.
Seeking for happiness we find the way
Doing the things we ought to do each day.
|
free_verse
|
Alfred Noyes
|
An Open Boat
|
O what is that whimpering there in the darkness?
"Let him lie in my arms. He is breathing, I know.
Look. I'll wrap all my hair round his neck."--"The sea's rising,
The boat must be lightened. He's dead. He must go."
See--quick--by that flash, where the bitter foam tosses,
The cloud of white faces, in the black open boat,
And the wild pleading woman that clasps her dead lover
And wraps her loose hair round his breast and his throat.
"Come, lady, he's dead." "No, I feel his heart beating.
He's living, I know. But he's numbed with the cold.
See, I'm wrapping my hair all around him to warm him"----
--"No. We can't keep the dead, dear. Come, loosen your hold.
"Come. Loosen your fingers."--"O God, let me keep him!"
O, hide it, black night! Let the winds have their way!
For there are no voices or ghosts from that darkness,
To fret the bare seas at the breaking of day.
|
O what is that whimpering there in the darkness?
"Let him lie in my arms. He is breathing, I know.
Look. I'll wrap all my hair round his neck."--"The sea's rising,
The boat must be lightened. He's dead. He must go."
See--quick--by that flash, where the bitter foam tosses,
|
The cloud of white faces, in the black open boat,
And the wild pleading woman that clasps her dead lover
And wraps her loose hair round his breast and his throat.
"Come, lady, he's dead." "No, I feel his heart beating.
He's living, I know. But he's numbed with the cold.
See, I'm wrapping my hair all around him to warm him"----
--"No. We can't keep the dead, dear. Come, loosen your hold.
"Come. Loosen your fingers."--"O God, let me keep him!"
O, hide it, black night! Let the winds have their way!
For there are no voices or ghosts from that darkness,
To fret the bare seas at the breaking of day.
|
free_verse
|
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
|
Explanation Of An Ancient Woodcut, Representing Hans Sachs' Poetical Mission.
|
Early within his workshop here,
On Sundays stands our master dear;
His dirty apron he puts away,
And wears a cleanly doublet to-day;
Lets wax'd thread, hammer, and pincers rest,
And lays his awl within his chest;
The seventh day he takes repose
From many pulls and many blows.
Soon as the spring-sun meets his view,
Repose begets him labour anew;
He feels that he holds within his brain
A little world, that broods there amain,
And that begins to act and to live,
Which he to others would gladly give.
He had a skilful eye and true,
And was full kind and loving too.
For contemplation, clear and pure,
For making all his own again, sure;
He had a tongue that charm'd when 'twas heard,
And graceful and light flow'd ev'ry word;
Which made the Muses in him rejoice,
The Master-singer of their choice.
And now a maiden enter'd there,
With swelling breast, and body fair;
With footing firm she took her place,
And moved with stately, noble grace;
She did not walk in wanton mood,
Nor look around with glances lewd.
She held a measure in her hand,
Her girdle was a golden band,
A wreath of corn was on her head,
Her eye the day's bright lustre shed;
Her name is honest Industry,
Else, Justice, Magnanimity.
She enter'd with a kindly greeting;
He felt no wonder at the meeting,
For, kind and fair as she might be,
He long had known her, fancied he.
"I have selected thee," she said,
"From all who earth's wild mazes tread,
That thou shouldst have clear-sighted sense,
And nought that's wrong shouldst e'er commence.
When others run in strange confusion,
Thy gaze shall see through each illusion
When others dolefully complain,
Thy cause with jesting thou shalt gain,
Honour and right shalt value duly,
In everything act simply, truly,
Virtue and godliness proclaim,
And call all evil by its name,
Nought soften down, attempt no quibble,
Nought polish up, nought vainly scribble.
The world shall stand before thee, then,
As seen by Albert Durer's ken,
In manliness and changeless life,
In inward strength, with firmness rife.
Fair Nature's Genius by the hand
Shall lead thee on through every land,
Teach thee each different life to scan,
Show thee the wondrous ways of man,
His shifts, confusions, thrustings, and drubbings,
Pushings, tearings, pressings, and rubbings;
The varying madness of the crew,
The anthill's ravings bring to view;
But thou shalt see all this express'd,
As though 'twere in a magic chest.
Write these things down for folks on earth,
In hopes they may to wit give birth."
Then she a window open'd wide,
And show'd a motley crowd outside,
All kinds of beings 'neath the sky,
As in his writings one may spy.
Our master dear was, after this,
On Nature thinking, full of bliss,
When tow'rd him, from the other side
He saw an aged woman glide;
The name she bears, Historia,
Mythologia, Fabula;
With footstep tottering and unstable
She dragg'd a large and wooden carved-table,
Where, with wide sleeves and human mien,
The Lord was catechizing seen;
Adam, Eve, Eden, the Serpent's seduction,
Gomorrah and Sodom's awful destruction,
The twelve illustrious women, too,
That mirror of honour brought to view;
All kinds of bloodthirstiness, murder, and sin,
The twelve wicked tyrants also were in,
And all kinds of goodly doctrine and law;
Saint Peter with his scourge you saw,
With the world's ways dissatisfied,
And by our Lord with power supplied.
Her train and dress, behind and before,
And e'en the seams, were painted o'er
With tales of worldly virtue and crime.
Our master view'd all this for a time;
The sight right gladly he survey'd,
So useful for him in his trade,
Whence he was able to procure
Example good and precept sure,
Recounting all with truthful care,
As though he had been present there.
His spirit seem'd from earth to fly,
He ne'er had turned away his eye,
Did he not just behind him hear
A rattle of bells approaching near.
And now a fool doth catch his eye,
With goat and ape's leap drawing nigh
A merry interlude preparing
With fooleries and jests unsparing.
Behind him, in a line drawn out,
He dragg'd all fools, the lean and stout,
The great and little, the empty and full,
All too witty, and all too dull,
A lash he flourish'd overhead,
As though a dance of apes he led,
Abusing them with bitterness,
As though his wrath would ne'er grow less.
While on this sight our master gazed,
His head was growing well-nigh crazed:
What words for all could he e'er find,
Could such a medley be combined?
Could he continue with delight
For evermore to sing and write?
When lo, from out a cloud's dark bed
In at the upper window sped
The Muse, in all her majesty,
As fair as our loved maids we see.
With clearness she around him threw
Her truth, that ever stronger grew.
"I, to ordain thee come," she spake:
"So prosper, and my blessing take!
The holy fire that slumb'ring lies
Within thee, in bright flames shall rise;
Yet that thine ever-restless life
May still with kindly strength be rife,
I, for thine inward spirit's calm.
Have granted nourishment and balm,
That rapture may thy soul imbue,
Like some fair blossom bathed in dew."
Behind his house then secretly
Outside the doorway pointed she,
Where, in a shady garden-nook,
A beauteous maid with downcast look
Was sitting where a stream was flowing,
With elder bushes near it growing,
She sat beneath an apple tree,
And nought around her seem'd to see.
Her lap was full of roses fair,
Which in a wreath she twined with care.
And, with them, leaves and blossoms blended:
For whom was that sweet wreath intended?
Thus sat she, modest and retired,
Her bosom throbb'd, with hope inspired;
Such deep forebodings fill'd her mind,
No room for wishing could she find,
And with the thoughts that o'er it flew,
Perchance a sigh was mingled too.
"But why should sorrow cloud thy brow?
That, dearest love, which fills thee now
Is fraught with joy and ecstasy.
Prepared in one alone for thee,
That he within thine eye may find
Solace when fortune proves unkind,
And be newborn through many a kiss,
That he receives with inward bliss;
When'er he clasps thee to his breast.
May he from all his toils find rest
When he in thy dear arms shall sink,
May he new life and vigour drink:
Fresh joys of youth shalt thou obtain,
In merry jest rejoice again.
With raillery and roguish spite,
Thou now shalt tease him, now delight.
Thus Love will nevermore grow old,
Thus will the minstrel ne'er be cold!"
While he thus lives, in secret bless'd,
Above him in the clouds doth rest
An oak-wreath, verdant and sublime,
Placed on his brow in after-time;
While they are banish'd to the slough,
Who their great master disavow.
|
Early within his workshop here,
On Sundays stands our master dear;
His dirty apron he puts away,
And wears a cleanly doublet to-day;
Lets wax'd thread, hammer, and pincers rest,
And lays his awl within his chest;
The seventh day he takes repose
From many pulls and many blows.
Soon as the spring-sun meets his view,
Repose begets him labour anew;
He feels that he holds within his brain
A little world, that broods there amain,
And that begins to act and to live,
Which he to others would gladly give.
He had a skilful eye and true,
And was full kind and loving too.
For contemplation, clear and pure,
For making all his own again, sure;
He had a tongue that charm'd when 'twas heard,
And graceful and light flow'd ev'ry word;
Which made the Muses in him rejoice,
The Master-singer of their choice.
And now a maiden enter'd there,
With swelling breast, and body fair;
With footing firm she took her place,
And moved with stately, noble grace;
She did not walk in wanton mood,
Nor look around with glances lewd.
She held a measure in her hand,
Her girdle was a golden band,
A wreath of corn was on her head,
Her eye the day's bright lustre shed;
Her name is honest Industry,
Else, Justice, Magnanimity.
She enter'd with a kindly greeting;
He felt no wonder at the meeting,
For, kind and fair as she might be,
He long had known her, fancied he.
"I have selected thee," she said,
"From all who earth's wild mazes tread,
That thou shouldst have clear-sighted sense,
And nought that's wrong shouldst e'er commence.
When others run in strange confusion,
Thy gaze shall see through each illusion
When others dolefully complain,
Thy cause with jesting thou shalt gain,
Honour and right shalt value duly,
In everything act simply, truly,
Virtue and godliness proclaim,
And call all evil by its name,
Nought soften down, attempt no quibble,
Nought polish up, nought vainly scribble.
The world shall stand before thee, then,
As seen by Albert Durer's ken,
In manliness and changeless life,
In inward strength, with firmness rife.
Fair Nature's Genius by the hand
Shall lead thee on through every land,
Teach thee each different life to scan,
Show thee the wondrous ways of man,
|
His shifts, confusions, thrustings, and drubbings,
Pushings, tearings, pressings, and rubbings;
The varying madness of the crew,
The anthill's ravings bring to view;
But thou shalt see all this express'd,
As though 'twere in a magic chest.
Write these things down for folks on earth,
In hopes they may to wit give birth."
Then she a window open'd wide,
And show'd a motley crowd outside,
All kinds of beings 'neath the sky,
As in his writings one may spy.
Our master dear was, after this,
On Nature thinking, full of bliss,
When tow'rd him, from the other side
He saw an aged woman glide;
The name she bears, Historia,
Mythologia, Fabula;
With footstep tottering and unstable
She dragg'd a large and wooden carved-table,
Where, with wide sleeves and human mien,
The Lord was catechizing seen;
Adam, Eve, Eden, the Serpent's seduction,
Gomorrah and Sodom's awful destruction,
The twelve illustrious women, too,
That mirror of honour brought to view;
All kinds of bloodthirstiness, murder, and sin,
The twelve wicked tyrants also were in,
And all kinds of goodly doctrine and law;
Saint Peter with his scourge you saw,
With the world's ways dissatisfied,
And by our Lord with power supplied.
Her train and dress, behind and before,
And e'en the seams, were painted o'er
With tales of worldly virtue and crime.
Our master view'd all this for a time;
The sight right gladly he survey'd,
So useful for him in his trade,
Whence he was able to procure
Example good and precept sure,
Recounting all with truthful care,
As though he had been present there.
His spirit seem'd from earth to fly,
He ne'er had turned away his eye,
Did he not just behind him hear
A rattle of bells approaching near.
And now a fool doth catch his eye,
With goat and ape's leap drawing nigh
A merry interlude preparing
With fooleries and jests unsparing.
Behind him, in a line drawn out,
He dragg'd all fools, the lean and stout,
The great and little, the empty and full,
All too witty, and all too dull,
A lash he flourish'd overhead,
As though a dance of apes he led,
Abusing them with bitterness,
As though his wrath would ne'er grow less.
While on this sight our master gazed,
His head was growing well-nigh crazed:
What words for all could he e'er find,
Could such a medley be combined?
Could he continue with delight
For evermore to sing and write?
When lo, from out a cloud's dark bed
In at the upper window sped
The Muse, in all her majesty,
As fair as our loved maids we see.
With clearness she around him threw
Her truth, that ever stronger grew.
"I, to ordain thee come," she spake:
"So prosper, and my blessing take!
The holy fire that slumb'ring lies
Within thee, in bright flames shall rise;
Yet that thine ever-restless life
May still with kindly strength be rife,
I, for thine inward spirit's calm.
Have granted nourishment and balm,
That rapture may thy soul imbue,
Like some fair blossom bathed in dew."
Behind his house then secretly
Outside the doorway pointed she,
Where, in a shady garden-nook,
A beauteous maid with downcast look
Was sitting where a stream was flowing,
With elder bushes near it growing,
She sat beneath an apple tree,
And nought around her seem'd to see.
Her lap was full of roses fair,
Which in a wreath she twined with care.
And, with them, leaves and blossoms blended:
For whom was that sweet wreath intended?
Thus sat she, modest and retired,
Her bosom throbb'd, with hope inspired;
Such deep forebodings fill'd her mind,
No room for wishing could she find,
And with the thoughts that o'er it flew,
Perchance a sigh was mingled too.
"But why should sorrow cloud thy brow?
That, dearest love, which fills thee now
Is fraught with joy and ecstasy.
Prepared in one alone for thee,
That he within thine eye may find
Solace when fortune proves unkind,
And be newborn through many a kiss,
That he receives with inward bliss;
When'er he clasps thee to his breast.
May he from all his toils find rest
When he in thy dear arms shall sink,
May he new life and vigour drink:
Fresh joys of youth shalt thou obtain,
In merry jest rejoice again.
With raillery and roguish spite,
Thou now shalt tease him, now delight.
Thus Love will nevermore grow old,
Thus will the minstrel ne'er be cold!"
While he thus lives, in secret bless'd,
Above him in the clouds doth rest
An oak-wreath, verdant and sublime,
Placed on his brow in after-time;
While they are banish'd to the slough,
Who their great master disavow.
|
free_verse
|
Robert Herrick
|
A Vow To Venus
|
Happily I had a sight
Of my dearest dear last night;
Make her this day smile on me,
And I'll roses give to thee!
|
Happily I had a sight
|
Of my dearest dear last night;
Make her this day smile on me,
And I'll roses give to thee!
|
quatrain
|
Thomas Moore
|
Some Account Of The Late Dinner To Dan.
|
From tongue to tongue the rumor flew;
All askt, aghast, "Is't true? is't true?"
But none knew whether 'twas fact or fable:
And still the unholy rumor ran,
From Tory woman to Tory man,
Tho' none to come at the truth was able--
Till, lo! at last, the fact came out,
The horrible fact, beyond all doubt,
That Dan had dined at the Viceroy's table;
Had flesht his Popish knife and fork
In the heart of the Establisht mutton and pork!
Who can forget the deep sensation
That news produced in this orthodox nation?
Deans, rectors, curates, all agreed,
If Dan was allowed at the Castle to feed,
'Twas clearly all up with the Protestant creed!
There hadn't indeed such an apparition
Been heard of in Dublin since that day
When, during the first grand exhibition
Of Don Giovanni, that naughty play,
There appeared, as if raised by necromancers,
An extra devil among the dancers!
Yes--every one saw with fearful thrill
That a devil too much had joined the quadrille;
And sulphur was smelt and the lamps let fall
A grim, green light o'er the ghastly ball,
And the poor sham devils didn't like it at all;
For they knew from whence the intruder had come,
Tho' he left, that night, his tail at home.
This fact, we see, is a parallel case
To the dinner that some weeks since took place.
With the difference slight of fiend and man,
It shows what a nest of Popish sinners
That city must be, where the devil and Dan
May thus drop in at quadrilles and dinners!
But mark the end of these foul proceedings,
These demon hops and Popish feedings.
Some comfort 'twill be--to those, at least,
Who've studied this awful dinner question--
To know that Dan, on the night of that feast,
Was seized with a dreadful indigestion;
That envoys were sent post-haste to his priest
To come and absolve the suffering sinner,
For eating so much at a heretic dinner;
And some good people were even afraid
That Peel's old confectioner--still at the trade--
Had poisoned the Papist with orangeade.
|
From tongue to tongue the rumor flew;
All askt, aghast, "Is't true? is't true?"
But none knew whether 'twas fact or fable:
And still the unholy rumor ran,
From Tory woman to Tory man,
Tho' none to come at the truth was able--
Till, lo! at last, the fact came out,
The horrible fact, beyond all doubt,
That Dan had dined at the Viceroy's table;
Had flesht his Popish knife and fork
In the heart of the Establisht mutton and pork!
Who can forget the deep sensation
That news produced in this orthodox nation?
Deans, rectors, curates, all agreed,
If Dan was allowed at the Castle to feed,
|
'Twas clearly all up with the Protestant creed!
There hadn't indeed such an apparition
Been heard of in Dublin since that day
When, during the first grand exhibition
Of Don Giovanni, that naughty play,
There appeared, as if raised by necromancers,
An extra devil among the dancers!
Yes--every one saw with fearful thrill
That a devil too much had joined the quadrille;
And sulphur was smelt and the lamps let fall
A grim, green light o'er the ghastly ball,
And the poor sham devils didn't like it at all;
For they knew from whence the intruder had come,
Tho' he left, that night, his tail at home.
This fact, we see, is a parallel case
To the dinner that some weeks since took place.
With the difference slight of fiend and man,
It shows what a nest of Popish sinners
That city must be, where the devil and Dan
May thus drop in at quadrilles and dinners!
But mark the end of these foul proceedings,
These demon hops and Popish feedings.
Some comfort 'twill be--to those, at least,
Who've studied this awful dinner question--
To know that Dan, on the night of that feast,
Was seized with a dreadful indigestion;
That envoys were sent post-haste to his priest
To come and absolve the suffering sinner,
For eating so much at a heretic dinner;
And some good people were even afraid
That Peel's old confectioner--still at the trade--
Had poisoned the Papist with orangeade.
|
free_verse
|
William Henry Davies
|
Seeking Joy
|
Joy, how I sought thee!
Silver I spent and gold,
On the pleasures of this world,
In splendid garments clad;
The wine I drank was sweet,
Rich morsels I did eat,
Oh, but my life was sad!
Joy, how I sought thee!
Joy, I have found thee!
Far from the halls of Mirth,
Back to the soft green earth,
Where people are not many;
I find thee, Joy, in hours
With clouds, and birds, and flowers,
Thou dost not charge one penny.
Joy, I have found thee!
|
Joy, how I sought thee!
Silver I spent and gold,
On the pleasures of this world,
In splendid garments clad;
The wine I drank was sweet,
|
Rich morsels I did eat,
Oh, but my life was sad!
Joy, how I sought thee!
Joy, I have found thee!
Far from the halls of Mirth,
Back to the soft green earth,
Where people are not many;
I find thee, Joy, in hours
With clouds, and birds, and flowers,
Thou dost not charge one penny.
Joy, I have found thee!
|
free_verse
|
Dora Sigerson Shorter
|
The Skeleton In The Cupboard
|
Just this one day in all the year
Let all be one, let all be dear;
Wife, husband, child in fond embrace,
And thrust the phantom from its place.
No bitter words, no frowning brow,
Disturb the Christmas festal, now
The skeleton's behind the door.
Nor let the child, with looks askance,
Find out its sad inheritance
From souls that held no happiness,
Of home, where love is seldom guest;
But in his coming years retain
This one sweet night that had no pain;
The skeleton's behind the door.
In vain you raise the wassail bowl,
And pledge your passion, soul to soul.
You hear the sweet bells ring in rhyme,
You wreath the room for Christmas time
In vain. The solemn silence falls,
The death watch ticks within the walls;
The skeleton taps on the door.
Then let him back into his place,
Let us sit out the old disgrace;
Nor seek the phantom now to lay,
That haunted us through every day;
For plainer is the ghost; useless
Is this pretence of happiness;
The skeleton taps on the door.
|
Just this one day in all the year
Let all be one, let all be dear;
Wife, husband, child in fond embrace,
And thrust the phantom from its place.
No bitter words, no frowning brow,
Disturb the Christmas festal, now
The skeleton's behind the door.
Nor let the child, with looks askance,
Find out its sad inheritance
|
From souls that held no happiness,
Of home, where love is seldom guest;
But in his coming years retain
This one sweet night that had no pain;
The skeleton's behind the door.
In vain you raise the wassail bowl,
And pledge your passion, soul to soul.
You hear the sweet bells ring in rhyme,
You wreath the room for Christmas time
In vain. The solemn silence falls,
The death watch ticks within the walls;
The skeleton taps on the door.
Then let him back into his place,
Let us sit out the old disgrace;
Nor seek the phantom now to lay,
That haunted us through every day;
For plainer is the ghost; useless
Is this pretence of happiness;
The skeleton taps on the door.
|
free_verse
|
John Greenleaf Whittier
|
Inscription-For The Relief By Preston Powers
|
The Eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown peaks,
For the wild hunter and the Bison seeks,
In the changed world below; and finds alone
Their graven semblance in the eternal stone
|
The Eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown peaks,
|
For the wild hunter and the Bison seeks,
In the changed world below; and finds alone
Their graven semblance in the eternal stone
|
quatrain
|
William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)
|
In Narrow Ways
|
Some lives are set in narrow ways,
By Love's wise tenderness.
They seem to suffer all their days
Life's direst storm and stress.
But God shall raise them up at length,
His purposes are sure,
He for their weakness shall give strength,
For every ill a cure.
|
Some lives are set in narrow ways,
By Love's wise tenderness.
|
They seem to suffer all their days
Life's direst storm and stress.
But God shall raise them up at length,
His purposes are sure,
He for their weakness shall give strength,
For every ill a cure.
|
octave
|
William Wordsworth
|
Pelion And Ossa Flourish Side By Side
|
Pelion and Ossa flourish side by side,
Together in immortal books enrolled:
His ancient dower Olympus hath not sold;
And that inspiring Hill, which "did divide
Into two ample horns his forehead wide,"
Shines with poetic radiance as of old;
While not an English Mountain we behold
By the celestial Muses glorified.
Yet round our sea-girt shore they rise in crowds:
What was the great Parnassus' self to Thee,
Mount Skiddaw? In his natural sovereignty
Our British Hill is nobler far; he shrouds
His double front among Atlantic clouds,
And pours forth streams more sweet than Castaly.
|
Pelion and Ossa flourish side by side,
Together in immortal books enrolled:
His ancient dower Olympus hath not sold;
And that inspiring Hill, which "did divide
|
Into two ample horns his forehead wide,"
Shines with poetic radiance as of old;
While not an English Mountain we behold
By the celestial Muses glorified.
Yet round our sea-girt shore they rise in crowds:
What was the great Parnassus' self to Thee,
Mount Skiddaw? In his natural sovereignty
Our British Hill is nobler far; he shrouds
His double front among Atlantic clouds,
And pours forth streams more sweet than Castaly.
|
sonnet
|
George MacDonald
|
Song-Sermon
|
Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs,
For as his work thou giv'st the man.
From us, not thee, come all our wrongs;
Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs:
With small-cord whips and scorpion thongs
Thou lay'st on every ill thy ban.
Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs,
For as his work thou giv'st the man.
|
Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs,
For as his work thou giv'st the man.
|
From us, not thee, come all our wrongs;
Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs:
With small-cord whips and scorpion thongs
Thou lay'st on every ill thy ban.
Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs,
For as his work thou giv'st the man.
|
octave
|
Paul Cameron Brown
|
Chopsticks
|
Only marginal chances
of finding a Great White
in my coffee
although the cigaret's tubular belly
is flotsam against my hand -
a dirty kerosene color, sleek & grey.
2
And stirring the embers of my cup,
suppose the grinds become primitive shark lore
of forgotten peoples or death sticks,
dry rot teeth, fathoms
squinting light.
|
Only marginal chances
of finding a Great White
in my coffee
although the cigaret's tubular belly
|
is flotsam against my hand -
a dirty kerosene color, sleek & grey.
2
And stirring the embers of my cup,
suppose the grinds become primitive shark lore
of forgotten peoples or death sticks,
dry rot teeth, fathoms
squinting light.
|
free_verse
|
John Clare
|
Peace.
|
I seek for Peace--I care not where 'tis found:
On this rude scene in briars and brambles drest,
If peace dwells here, 'tis consecrated ground,
And owns the power to give my bosom rest;
To soothe the rankling of each bitter wound,
Gall'd by rude Envy's adder-biting jest,
And worldly strife;--ah, I am looking round
For Peace's hermitage, can it be found?--
Surely that breeze that o'er the blue wave curl'd
Did whisper soft, "Thy wanderings here are blest."
How different from the language of the world!
Nor jeers nor taunts in this still spot are given:
Its calm's a balsam to a soul distrest;
And, where Peace smiles, a wilderness is heaven.
|
I seek for Peace--I care not where 'tis found:
On this rude scene in briars and brambles drest,
If peace dwells here, 'tis consecrated ground,
And owns the power to give my bosom rest;
|
To soothe the rankling of each bitter wound,
Gall'd by rude Envy's adder-biting jest,
And worldly strife;--ah, I am looking round
For Peace's hermitage, can it be found?--
Surely that breeze that o'er the blue wave curl'd
Did whisper soft, "Thy wanderings here are blest."
How different from the language of the world!
Nor jeers nor taunts in this still spot are given:
Its calm's a balsam to a soul distrest;
And, where Peace smiles, a wilderness is heaven.
|
sonnet
|
John Clare
|
The Disappointment.
|
"Ah, where can he linger?" said Doll, with a sigh,
As bearing her milk-burthen home:
"Since he's broken his vow, near an hour has gone by,
So fair as he promis'd to come."
-She'd fain had him notice the loudly-clapt gate,
And fain call'd him up to her song;
But while her stretch'd shade prov'd the omen too late,
Heavy-hearted she mutter'd along.
She look'd and she listen'd, and sigh follow'd sigh,
And jealous thoughts troubled her head;
The skirts of the pasture were losing the eye,
As eve her last finishing spread;
And hope, so endearing, was topmost to see,
As 'tween-light was cheating the view,
Every thing at a distance--a bush, or a tree,
Her love's pleasing picture it drew.
The pasture-gate creak'd, pit-a-pat her heart went,
Fond thrilling with hope's pleasing pain,
She certainly thought that a signal it meant,
So she turn'd, to be cheated again;
Expectations and wishes throbb'd warm to her side,
But soon the sweet feeling was lost,
Chill damps quick ensuing, when nigh she descried
Her idle cows rubbing the post.
By fancy soon tickled, by hopes led astray,
Again did she hope, but in vain;--
A twitch at her sleeve!--'twas the shepherd's fond way,
And she look'd o'er her shoulder again;
But a bramble had caught at her gown passing by;
Disappointment, how great is thy smart!
How deep was the sorrow explain'd in that sigh,
Like a bramble-thorn twang'd through her heart!
Quite wearied she soodled along through the dew,
And oft look'd and listen'd around,
And loudly she clapt every gate she came through,
To call her lost love to the sound;
And whenever to rest she her buckets set down,
She jingled her yokes to and fro,
And her yokes she might jingle till morn--a rude clown,
Ere he it seem'd offered to go.
Passing maids wonder'd much as she came to the town,
To see her so still on her way;--
She ne'er stopt to name a young man or new gown,
So much as she used to say:
Some ask'd if her tongue she had lost on the plain,
Some enquir'd if she ow'd any spite;
But short were the answers she made them again,
"Yes," or "no," and a mutter'd "good night."
She'd cause to be silent, and knew it too well,
And said to herself passing by,
"Disappointments like mine if to you they befel,
Ye would then be as sulky as I."
Now nigh home and Roger, her bosom glow'd hot,
And jealousies rose on her cheek;
She'd be bound his delay a new sweetheart had got,
And if he came now she'd not speak.
She sat herself down soon as got in the house,
No dossity in her to stir;
The cat at her presence left watching the mouse,
And the milk she might lap it for her,
Eat it all an she would, for she car'd not a pin,
She'd other fish frying as then;
And soon as chance offer'd that she could begin,
She 'gan weigh her doubts to her sen.
"Ah, the gipsy, she told me my fortune last night,
Too true have I prov'd what she said:
'You love him too warmly that loves you too light,'
And grievous she shaked her head;
'He scorns you--the lines of your hands,' she said, 'meet,'
I was fit to drop under my cow;
'It's as plain as the nose on your face for to see't,'
I could not believe it till now.
"How could I, when now but a day or two's gone,
Since he fuss'd me so up in the grove,
And preach'd like a parson as leading me on,
And seem'd like a saint fall'n in love?
He smilingly bid me behold the stiff bean,
How it held up the weak winding pea,--
'And so on my arm,' said he, 'Dolly may lean,
For I'll be a prop unto thee.'
"And oft did he shew me, as proofs of his love,
The gate, and the stile, where we came,
And many a favourite tree in the grove,
Where he had been marking my name:
And these made him staunch in my foolish esteem;
But deuce take such provings, forsooth,
They're like flimsy nick-nacks, that cheat in a dream,
When the morning sun wakes with the truth.
Last week I the first time 'gan doubt his respect,
When at market he left me behind;
He made no excuses to hide his neglect,
Plain proof that he'd changed his mind:
When I said how I loiter'd in hopes he would come,
And when all my troubles he learn'd,
How late and how wet I was ere I got home,
He ne'er seem'd a morsel concern'd.
"And magpies that chatter'd, no omen so black,
The dreams of my being a bride,
Odd crows that are constantly fix'd in my track,
Plain prov'd that bad luck would betide:
The coffin-spark burning my holiday-gown,
As nothing's so certain a sign;
The knives I keep crossing whenever laid down,
Were proofs of these sorrows of mine.
"A good-for-nought looby, he nettled me sore,
I minded him oft when at church,
How under the wenches' fine bonnets he'd glower,
As smiling they came in the porch:
Lord knows, scores of times he has made me to sin,
For, being so bother'd and vex'd,
'Bout the parson's good preaching I car'd not a pin,
And never once thought of the text.
"Like a fool, with full many a lying excuse,
To see him I've stole in the street,
And drest to entice him; but all's of no use,
'Tis folly such things to repeat:
No, no, his behaviour, a good-for-nought chap,
I'll see no uneasiness in it;
The wreath he last bought me, to dress my new cap,
I'll burn it to ashes this minute."
Thus she vented her griefs, and gave ease to her sighs,
Till the tinkled latch startled her dumb,
And ended her tale in a pause of surprise,
While hope whisper'd comfort, "he's come!"
He enter'd, and begg'd she'd excuse the late hour,
She doubts his assertions awhile,
Then as the glad sun breaks the clouds in a shower,
Tears melt in a welcoming smile.
Ah, sad disappointment! your damp chilly pain
And all jealous doubts you impart,
Description but mixes her colours in vain
To picture your horrors at heart.
Gall'd jealousy, like as the tide, ebbs to rest,
Subsiding as gradually o'er;
Contented she smother'd her sighs on his breast,
And the kiss seem'd as sweet as before.
|
"Ah, where can he linger?" said Doll, with a sigh,
As bearing her milk-burthen home:
"Since he's broken his vow, near an hour has gone by,
So fair as he promis'd to come."
-She'd fain had him notice the loudly-clapt gate,
And fain call'd him up to her song;
But while her stretch'd shade prov'd the omen too late,
Heavy-hearted she mutter'd along.
She look'd and she listen'd, and sigh follow'd sigh,
And jealous thoughts troubled her head;
The skirts of the pasture were losing the eye,
As eve her last finishing spread;
And hope, so endearing, was topmost to see,
As 'tween-light was cheating the view,
Every thing at a distance--a bush, or a tree,
Her love's pleasing picture it drew.
The pasture-gate creak'd, pit-a-pat her heart went,
Fond thrilling with hope's pleasing pain,
She certainly thought that a signal it meant,
So she turn'd, to be cheated again;
Expectations and wishes throbb'd warm to her side,
But soon the sweet feeling was lost,
Chill damps quick ensuing, when nigh she descried
Her idle cows rubbing the post.
By fancy soon tickled, by hopes led astray,
Again did she hope, but in vain;--
A twitch at her sleeve!--'twas the shepherd's fond way,
And she look'd o'er her shoulder again;
But a bramble had caught at her gown passing by;
Disappointment, how great is thy smart!
How deep was the sorrow explain'd in that sigh,
Like a bramble-thorn twang'd through her heart!
Quite wearied she soodled along through the dew,
And oft look'd and listen'd around,
And loudly she clapt every gate she came through,
To call her lost love to the sound;
And whenever to rest she her buckets set down,
She jingled her yokes to and fro,
And her yokes she might jingle till morn--a rude clown,
Ere he it seem'd offered to go.
Passing maids wonder'd much as she came to the town,
To see her so still on her way;--
She ne'er stopt to name a young man or new gown,
So much as she used to say:
Some ask'd if her tongue she had lost on the plain,
|
Some enquir'd if she ow'd any spite;
But short were the answers she made them again,
"Yes," or "no," and a mutter'd "good night."
She'd cause to be silent, and knew it too well,
And said to herself passing by,
"Disappointments like mine if to you they befel,
Ye would then be as sulky as I."
Now nigh home and Roger, her bosom glow'd hot,
And jealousies rose on her cheek;
She'd be bound his delay a new sweetheart had got,
And if he came now she'd not speak.
She sat herself down soon as got in the house,
No dossity in her to stir;
The cat at her presence left watching the mouse,
And the milk she might lap it for her,
Eat it all an she would, for she car'd not a pin,
She'd other fish frying as then;
And soon as chance offer'd that she could begin,
She 'gan weigh her doubts to her sen.
"Ah, the gipsy, she told me my fortune last night,
Too true have I prov'd what she said:
'You love him too warmly that loves you too light,'
And grievous she shaked her head;
'He scorns you--the lines of your hands,' she said, 'meet,'
I was fit to drop under my cow;
'It's as plain as the nose on your face for to see't,'
I could not believe it till now.
"How could I, when now but a day or two's gone,
Since he fuss'd me so up in the grove,
And preach'd like a parson as leading me on,
And seem'd like a saint fall'n in love?
He smilingly bid me behold the stiff bean,
How it held up the weak winding pea,--
'And so on my arm,' said he, 'Dolly may lean,
For I'll be a prop unto thee.'
"And oft did he shew me, as proofs of his love,
The gate, and the stile, where we came,
And many a favourite tree in the grove,
Where he had been marking my name:
And these made him staunch in my foolish esteem;
But deuce take such provings, forsooth,
They're like flimsy nick-nacks, that cheat in a dream,
When the morning sun wakes with the truth.
Last week I the first time 'gan doubt his respect,
When at market he left me behind;
He made no excuses to hide his neglect,
Plain proof that he'd changed his mind:
When I said how I loiter'd in hopes he would come,
And when all my troubles he learn'd,
How late and how wet I was ere I got home,
He ne'er seem'd a morsel concern'd.
"And magpies that chatter'd, no omen so black,
The dreams of my being a bride,
Odd crows that are constantly fix'd in my track,
Plain prov'd that bad luck would betide:
The coffin-spark burning my holiday-gown,
As nothing's so certain a sign;
The knives I keep crossing whenever laid down,
Were proofs of these sorrows of mine.
"A good-for-nought looby, he nettled me sore,
I minded him oft when at church,
How under the wenches' fine bonnets he'd glower,
As smiling they came in the porch:
Lord knows, scores of times he has made me to sin,
For, being so bother'd and vex'd,
'Bout the parson's good preaching I car'd not a pin,
And never once thought of the text.
"Like a fool, with full many a lying excuse,
To see him I've stole in the street,
And drest to entice him; but all's of no use,
'Tis folly such things to repeat:
No, no, his behaviour, a good-for-nought chap,
I'll see no uneasiness in it;
The wreath he last bought me, to dress my new cap,
I'll burn it to ashes this minute."
Thus she vented her griefs, and gave ease to her sighs,
Till the tinkled latch startled her dumb,
And ended her tale in a pause of surprise,
While hope whisper'd comfort, "he's come!"
He enter'd, and begg'd she'd excuse the late hour,
She doubts his assertions awhile,
Then as the glad sun breaks the clouds in a shower,
Tears melt in a welcoming smile.
Ah, sad disappointment! your damp chilly pain
And all jealous doubts you impart,
Description but mixes her colours in vain
To picture your horrors at heart.
Gall'd jealousy, like as the tide, ebbs to rest,
Subsiding as gradually o'er;
Contented she smother'd her sighs on his breast,
And the kiss seem'd as sweet as before.
|
free_verse
|
Sara Teasdale
|
Song I
|
You bound strong sandals on my feet,
You gave me bread and wine,
And sent me under sun and stars,
For all the world was mine.
Oh, take the sandals off my feet,
You know not what you do;
For all my world is in your arms,
My sun and stars are you.
|
You bound strong sandals on my feet,
You gave me bread and wine,
|
And sent me under sun and stars,
For all the world was mine.
Oh, take the sandals off my feet,
You know not what you do;
For all my world is in your arms,
My sun and stars are you.
|
octave
|
Philip Sidney (Sir)
|
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXXIII
|
Loue, still a Boy, and oft a wanton is,
School'd onely by his mothers tender eye;
What wonder then if he his lesson misse,
When for so soft a rodde deare play he trye?
And yet my Starre, because a sugred kisse
In sport I suckt while she asleepe did lye,
Doth lowre, nay chide, nay threat for only this.
Sweet, it was saucie Loue, not humble I.
But no scuse serues; she makes her wrath appeare
In beauties throne: see now, who dares come neare
Those scarlet Iudges, thretning bloudie paine.
O heau'nly foole, thy most kisse-worthy face
Anger inuests with such a louely grace,
That Angers selfe I needs must kisse againe.
|
Loue, still a Boy, and oft a wanton is,
School'd onely by his mothers tender eye;
What wonder then if he his lesson misse,
When for so soft a rodde deare play he trye?
|
And yet my Starre, because a sugred kisse
In sport I suckt while she asleepe did lye,
Doth lowre, nay chide, nay threat for only this.
Sweet, it was saucie Loue, not humble I.
But no scuse serues; she makes her wrath appeare
In beauties throne: see now, who dares come neare
Those scarlet Iudges, thretning bloudie paine.
O heau'nly foole, thy most kisse-worthy face
Anger inuests with such a louely grace,
That Angers selfe I needs must kisse againe.
|
sonnet
|
Paul Bewsher
|
Colours.
|
How bright is Earth's rich gown
None but an Airman knows
Yellow, and green, and brown -
How bright is Earth's rich gown!
I see, as I gaze down,
Its purple, cream, and rose.
How bright is Earth's rich gown
None but an Airman knows!
|
How bright is Earth's rich gown
None but an Airman knows
|
Yellow, and green, and brown -
How bright is Earth's rich gown!
I see, as I gaze down,
Its purple, cream, and rose.
How bright is Earth's rich gown
None but an Airman knows!
|
octave
|
Charlotte Bronte
|
Preference.
|
Not in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion?
This, thy tenderness for me?
Judged, even, by thine own confession,
Thou art steeped in perfidy.
Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me!
Thus I read thee long ago;
Therefore, dared I not deceive thee,
Even with friendship's gentle show.
Therefore, with impassive coldness
Have I ever met thy gaze;
Though, full oft, with daring boldness,
Thou thine eyes to mine didst raise.
Why that smile? Thou now art deeming
This my coldness all untrue,
But a mask of frozen seeming,
Hiding secret fires from view.
Touch my hand, thou self-deceiver;
Nay-be calm, for I am so:
Does it burn? Does my lip quiver?
Has mine eye a troubled glow?
Canst thou call a moment's colour
To my forehead, to my cheek?
Canst thou tinge their tranquil pallor
With one flattering, feverish streak?
Am I marble? What! no woman
Could so calm before thee stand?
Nothing living, sentient, human,
Could so coldly take thy hand?
Yes, a sister might, a mother:
My good-will is sisterly:
Dream not, then, I strive to smother
Fires that inly burn for thee.
Rave not, rage not, wrath is fruitless,
Fury cannot change my mind;
I but deem the feeling rootless
Which so whirls in passion's wind.
Can I love? Oh, deeply, truly,
Warmly, fondly, but not thee;
And my love is answered duly,
With an equal energy.
Wouldst thou see thy rival? Hasten,
Draw that curtain soft aside,
Look where yon thick branches chasten
Noon, with shades of eventide.
In that glade, where foliage blending
Forms a green arch overhead,
Sits thy rival, thoughtful bending
O'er a stand with papers spread,
Motionless, his fingers plying
That untired, unresting pen;
Time and tide unnoticed flying,
There he sits, the first of men!
Man of conscience, man of reason;
Stern, perchance, but ever just;
Foe to falsehood, wrong, and treason,
Honour's shield, and virtue's trust!
Worker, thinker, firm defender
Of Heaven's truth, man's liberty;
Soul of iron, proof to slander,
Rock where founders tyranny.
Fame he seeks not, but full surely
She will seek him, in his home;
This I know, and wait securely
For the atoning hour to come.
To that man my faith is given,
Therefore, soldier, cease to sue;
While God reigns in earth and heaven,
I to him will still be true!
|
Not in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion?
This, thy tenderness for me?
Judged, even, by thine own confession,
Thou art steeped in perfidy.
Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me!
Thus I read thee long ago;
Therefore, dared I not deceive thee,
Even with friendship's gentle show.
Therefore, with impassive coldness
Have I ever met thy gaze;
Though, full oft, with daring boldness,
Thou thine eyes to mine didst raise.
Why that smile? Thou now art deeming
This my coldness all untrue,
But a mask of frozen seeming,
Hiding secret fires from view.
Touch my hand, thou self-deceiver;
Nay-be calm, for I am so:
Does it burn? Does my lip quiver?
Has mine eye a troubled glow?
|
Canst thou call a moment's colour
To my forehead, to my cheek?
Canst thou tinge their tranquil pallor
With one flattering, feverish streak?
Am I marble? What! no woman
Could so calm before thee stand?
Nothing living, sentient, human,
Could so coldly take thy hand?
Yes, a sister might, a mother:
My good-will is sisterly:
Dream not, then, I strive to smother
Fires that inly burn for thee.
Rave not, rage not, wrath is fruitless,
Fury cannot change my mind;
I but deem the feeling rootless
Which so whirls in passion's wind.
Can I love? Oh, deeply, truly,
Warmly, fondly, but not thee;
And my love is answered duly,
With an equal energy.
Wouldst thou see thy rival? Hasten,
Draw that curtain soft aside,
Look where yon thick branches chasten
Noon, with shades of eventide.
In that glade, where foliage blending
Forms a green arch overhead,
Sits thy rival, thoughtful bending
O'er a stand with papers spread,
Motionless, his fingers plying
That untired, unresting pen;
Time and tide unnoticed flying,
There he sits, the first of men!
Man of conscience, man of reason;
Stern, perchance, but ever just;
Foe to falsehood, wrong, and treason,
Honour's shield, and virtue's trust!
Worker, thinker, firm defender
Of Heaven's truth, man's liberty;
Soul of iron, proof to slander,
Rock where founders tyranny.
Fame he seeks not, but full surely
She will seek him, in his home;
This I know, and wait securely
For the atoning hour to come.
To that man my faith is given,
Therefore, soldier, cease to sue;
While God reigns in earth and heaven,
I to him will still be true!
|
free_verse
|
Robert Herrick
|
To Silvia To Wed
|
Let us, though late, at last, my Silvia, wed;
And loving lie in one devoted bed.
Thy watch may stand, my minutes fly post haste;
No sound calls back the year that once is past.
Then, sweetest Silvia, let's no longer stay;
True love, we know, precipitates delay.
Away with doubts, all scruples hence remove!
No man, at one time, can be wise, and love.
|
Let us, though late, at last, my Silvia, wed;
And loving lie in one devoted bed.
|
Thy watch may stand, my minutes fly post haste;
No sound calls back the year that once is past.
Then, sweetest Silvia, let's no longer stay;
True love, we know, precipitates delay.
Away with doubts, all scruples hence remove!
No man, at one time, can be wise, and love.
|
octave
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
Northman
|
The gale that wrecked you on the sand,
It helped my rowers to row;
The storm is my best galley hand
And drives me where I go.
|
The gale that wrecked you on the sand,
|
It helped my rowers to row;
The storm is my best galley hand
And drives me where I go.
|
quatrain
|
Robert Burns
|
On A Noted Coxcomb.
|
Light lay the earth on Willy's breast,
His chicken-heart so tender;
But build a castle on his head,
His skull will prop it under.
|
Light lay the earth on Willy's breast,
|
His chicken-heart so tender;
But build a castle on his head,
His skull will prop it under.
|
quatrain
|
Robert Herrick
|
To His Kinswoman, Mrs. Penelope Wheeler.
|
Next is your lot, fair, to be number'd one,
Here, in my book's canonisation:
Late you come in; but you a saint shall be,
In chief, in this poetic liturgy.
|
Next is your lot, fair, to be number'd one,
|
Here, in my book's canonisation:
Late you come in; but you a saint shall be,
In chief, in this poetic liturgy.
|
quatrain
|
John Keats
|
Sonnet To The Nile
|
Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.
|
Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
|
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.
|
sonnet
|
Rudyard Kipling
|
The Decline Of The West
|
Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."
|
Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,
|
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."
|
quatrain
|
Robert Herrick
|
Any Way For Wealth.
|
E'en all religious courses to be rich
Hath been rehers'd by Joel Michelditch:
But now perceiving that it still does please
The sterner fates, to cross his purposes;
He tacks about, and now he doth profess
Rich he will be by all unrighteousness;
Thus if our ship fails of her anchor hold
We'll love the divel, so he lands the gold.
|
E'en all religious courses to be rich
Hath been rehers'd by Joel Michelditch:
|
But now perceiving that it still does please
The sterner fates, to cross his purposes;
He tacks about, and now he doth profess
Rich he will be by all unrighteousness;
Thus if our ship fails of her anchor hold
We'll love the divel, so he lands the gold.
|
octave
|
James Whitcomb Riley
|
Company Manners
|
When Bess gave her Dollies a Tea, said she, -
"It's unpolite, when they's Company,
To say you've drinked two cups, you see, -
But say you've drinked a couple of tea."
|
When Bess gave her Dollies a Tea, said she, -
|
"It's unpolite, when they's Company,
To say you've drinked two cups, you see, -
But say you've drinked a couple of tea."
|
quatrain
|
Robert Herrick
|
Upon Urles.
|
Urles had the gout so, that he could not stand;
Then from his feet it shifted to his hand:
When 'twas in's feet, his charity was small;
Now 'tis in's hand, he gives no alms at all.
|
Urles had the gout so, that he could not stand;
|
Then from his feet it shifted to his hand:
When 'twas in's feet, his charity was small;
Now 'tis in's hand, he gives no alms at all.
|
quatrain
|
Aldous Leonard Huxley
|
Summer Stillness
|
The stars are golden instants in the deep
Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set:
The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep
Seeming so motionless that I forget
The hollow booming bridges, where it slides,
Dark with the sad looks that it bears along,
Towards a sea whose unreturning tides
Ravish the sighted ships and the sailors' song.
|
The stars are golden instants in the deep
Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set:
|
The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep
Seeming so motionless that I forget
The hollow booming bridges, where it slides,
Dark with the sad looks that it bears along,
Towards a sea whose unreturning tides
Ravish the sighted ships and the sailors' song.
|
octave
|
Algernon Charles Swinburne
|
Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650): George Chapman
|
High priest of Homer, not elect in vain,
Deep trumpets blow before thee, shawms behind
Mix music with the rolling wheels that wind
Slow through the labouring triumph of thy train:
Fierce history, molten in thy forging brain,
Takes form and fire and fashion from thy mind,
Tormented and transmuted out of kind:
But howsoe'er thou shift thy strenuous strain,
Like Tailor1 smooth, like Fisher2 swollen, and now
Grim Yarrington3 scarce bloodier marked than thou,
Then bluff as Mayne's4 or broad-mouthed Barry's5 glee ,
Proud still with hoar predominance of brow
And beard like foam swept off the broad blown sea,
Where'er thou go, men's reverence goes with thee.
|
High priest of Homer, not elect in vain,
Deep trumpets blow before thee, shawms behind
Mix music with the rolling wheels that wind
Slow through the labouring triumph of thy train:
|
Fierce history, molten in thy forging brain,
Takes form and fire and fashion from thy mind,
Tormented and transmuted out of kind:
But howsoe'er thou shift thy strenuous strain,
Like Tailor1 smooth, like Fisher2 swollen, and now
Grim Yarrington3 scarce bloodier marked than thou,
Then bluff as Mayne's4 or broad-mouthed Barry's5 glee ,
Proud still with hoar predominance of brow
And beard like foam swept off the broad blown sea,
Where'er thou go, men's reverence goes with thee.
|
sonnet
|
John Milton
|
Psal. I. Done into Verse
|
Bless'd is the man who hath not walk'd astray
In counsel of the wicked, and ith'way
Of sinners hath not stood, and in the seat
Of scorners hath not sate. But in the great
Jehovahs Law is ever his delight,
And in his law he studies day and night.
He shall be as a tree which planted grows
By watry streams, and in his season knows
To yield his fruit, and his leaf shall not fall.
And what he takes in hand shall prosper all.
Not so the wicked, but as chaff which fann'd
The wind drives, so the wicked shall not stand
In judgment, or abide their tryal then
Nor sinners in th'assembly of just men.
For the Lord knows th'upright way of the just
And the way of bad men to ruine must.
|
Bless'd is the man who hath not walk'd astray
In counsel of the wicked, and ith'way
Of sinners hath not stood, and in the seat
Of scorners hath not sate. But in the great
Jehovahs Law is ever his delight,
|
And in his law he studies day and night.
He shall be as a tree which planted grows
By watry streams, and in his season knows
To yield his fruit, and his leaf shall not fall.
And what he takes in hand shall prosper all.
Not so the wicked, but as chaff which fann'd
The wind drives, so the wicked shall not stand
In judgment, or abide their tryal then
Nor sinners in th'assembly of just men.
For the Lord knows th'upright way of the just
And the way of bad men to ruine must.
|
free_verse
|
Matthew Prior
|
Epigram - Yes, Every Poet Is A Fool
|
Yes, every poet is a fool;
By demonstration, Ned can show it:
Happy could Ned's inverted rule
Prove every fool to be a poet.
|
Yes, every poet is a fool;
|
By demonstration, Ned can show it:
Happy could Ned's inverted rule
Prove every fool to be a poet.
|
quatrain
|
George MacDonald
|
An Old Story.
|
They were parted at last, although
Each was tenderly dear;
As asunder their eyes did go,
When first alone and near.
'Tis an old story this--
A trembling and a sigh,
A gaze in the eyes, a kiss--
Why will it not go by?
|
They were parted at last, although
Each was tenderly dear;
|
As asunder their eyes did go,
When first alone and near.
'Tis an old story this--
A trembling and a sigh,
A gaze in the eyes, a kiss--
Why will it not go by?
|
octave
|
Arthur Hugh Clough
|
In A London Square
|
Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane,
East wind and frost are safely gone;
With zephyr mild and balmy rain
The summer comes serenly on;
Earth, air, and sun and skies combine
To promise all that's kind and fair: -
But thou, O human heart of mine,
Be still, contain thyself, and bear.
December days were brief and chill,
The winds of March were wild and drear,
And, nearing and receding still,
Spring never would, we thought, be here.
The leaves that burst, the suns that shine,
Had, not the less, their certain date: -
And thou, O human heart of mine,
Be still, refrain thyself, and wait.
|
Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane,
East wind and frost are safely gone;
With zephyr mild and balmy rain
The summer comes serenly on;
Earth, air, and sun and skies combine
|
To promise all that's kind and fair: -
But thou, O human heart of mine,
Be still, contain thyself, and bear.
December days were brief and chill,
The winds of March were wild and drear,
And, nearing and receding still,
Spring never would, we thought, be here.
The leaves that burst, the suns that shine,
Had, not the less, their certain date: -
And thou, O human heart of mine,
Be still, refrain thyself, and wait.
|
free_verse
|
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz
|
Tschatir Dagh (Mirza)
|
The reverent Mussulman bends low to greet
You, Tschatir Dagh, Crimea's bright-masted ship!
World-altar,--minaret--the place where dip
Down stairs from golden Heaven for the feet!
You guard the door of God in splendor meet,
Like Gabriel with holy sword on hip;
In bright mist mantled from the toe to lip,
Tour turban set with alien stars and sweet.
If winter rule the world, or summer's sun,
If Giaour rage about, or winds are wild,
Above them, Tschatir Dagh, you, changeless one,
Are like to Allah, pure and undefiled;
Aloft you tower from out the lowly sod
To give to men again the will of God.
|
The reverent Mussulman bends low to greet
You, Tschatir Dagh, Crimea's bright-masted ship!
World-altar,--minaret--the place where dip
Down stairs from golden Heaven for the feet!
|
You guard the door of God in splendor meet,
Like Gabriel with holy sword on hip;
In bright mist mantled from the toe to lip,
Tour turban set with alien stars and sweet.
If winter rule the world, or summer's sun,
If Giaour rage about, or winds are wild,
Above them, Tschatir Dagh, you, changeless one,
Are like to Allah, pure and undefiled;
Aloft you tower from out the lowly sod
To give to men again the will of God.
|
sonnet
|
James Kenneth Stephen
|
Cynicus To W. Shakespeare
|
You wrote a line too much, my sage,
Of seers the first, and first of sayers;
For only half the world's a stage,
And only all the women players.
|
You wrote a line too much, my sage,
|
Of seers the first, and first of sayers;
For only half the world's a stage,
And only all the women players.
|
quatrain
|
Robert Burns
|
Her Flowing Locks.
|
Her flowing locks, the raven's wing,
Adown her neck and bosom hing;
How sweet unto that breast to cling,
And round that neck entwine her!
Her lips are roses wat wi' dew,
O, what a feast her bonnie mou'!
Her cheeks a mair celestial hue,
A crimson still diviner.
|
Her flowing locks, the raven's wing,
Adown her neck and bosom hing;
|
How sweet unto that breast to cling,
And round that neck entwine her!
Her lips are roses wat wi' dew,
O, what a feast her bonnie mou'!
Her cheeks a mair celestial hue,
A crimson still diviner.
|
octave
|
Walter Scott (Sir)
|
The Song Of Harold Harfager
|
The sun is rising dimly red,
The wind is wailing low and dread;
From his cliff the eagle sallies,
Leaves the wolf his darksome valleys;
In the mist the ravens hover,
Peep the wild dogs from the cover,
Screaming, croaking, baying, yelling,
Each in his wild accents telling,
"Soon we feast on dead and dying,
Fair-haired Harald's flag is flying."
Many a crest in air is streaming,
Many a helmet darkly gleaming,
Many an arm the axe uprears,
Doomed to hew the wood of spears.
All around the crowded ranks,
Horses neigh and armor clanks;
Chiefs are shouting, clarions ringing,
Louder still the bard is singing,
"Gather, footmen; gather, horsemen,
To the field, ye valiant Norsemen!
"Halt ye not not for food or slumber,
View not vantage, count not number;
Jolly reapers forward still,
Grow the crop on vale or hill,
Thick or scattered, stiff or lithe,
It shall down before the scythe.
Forward with your sickles bright,
Reap the harvest of the fight.
Onward footmen, onward horsemen,
To the charge, ye gallant Norsemen!
"Fatal Choosers of the Slaughter,
O'er you hovers Odin's daughter;
Hear the choice she spreads before ye,
Victory, and wealth, and glory;
Or old Valhalla's roaring hail,
Her ever-circling mead and ale,
Where for eternity unite
The joys of wassail and of fight.
Headlong forward, foot and horsemen,
Charge and fight, and die like Norsemen!"
|
The sun is rising dimly red,
The wind is wailing low and dread;
From his cliff the eagle sallies,
Leaves the wolf his darksome valleys;
In the mist the ravens hover,
Peep the wild dogs from the cover,
Screaming, croaking, baying, yelling,
Each in his wild accents telling,
"Soon we feast on dead and dying,
Fair-haired Harald's flag is flying."
Many a crest in air is streaming,
Many a helmet darkly gleaming,
Many an arm the axe uprears,
|
Doomed to hew the wood of spears.
All around the crowded ranks,
Horses neigh and armor clanks;
Chiefs are shouting, clarions ringing,
Louder still the bard is singing,
"Gather, footmen; gather, horsemen,
To the field, ye valiant Norsemen!
"Halt ye not not for food or slumber,
View not vantage, count not number;
Jolly reapers forward still,
Grow the crop on vale or hill,
Thick or scattered, stiff or lithe,
It shall down before the scythe.
Forward with your sickles bright,
Reap the harvest of the fight.
Onward footmen, onward horsemen,
To the charge, ye gallant Norsemen!
"Fatal Choosers of the Slaughter,
O'er you hovers Odin's daughter;
Hear the choice she spreads before ye,
Victory, and wealth, and glory;
Or old Valhalla's roaring hail,
Her ever-circling mead and ale,
Where for eternity unite
The joys of wassail and of fight.
Headlong forward, foot and horsemen,
Charge and fight, and die like Norsemen!"
|
free_verse
|
John Clare
|
Autumn.
|
The Spring is gone, the Summer-beauty wanes,
Like setting sunbeams, in their last decline;
As evening shadows, lingering on the plains,
Gleam dim and dimmer till they cease to shine:
The busy bee hath humm'd himself to rest;
Flowers dry to seed, that held the sweets of Spring;
Flown is the bird, and empty is the nest,
His broods are rear'd, no joys are left to sing.
There hangs a dreariness about the scene,
A present shadow of a bright has been.
Ah, sad to prove that Pleasure's golden springs,
Like common fountains, should so quickly dry,
And be so near allied to vulgar things!--
The joys of this world are but born to die.
|
The Spring is gone, the Summer-beauty wanes,
Like setting sunbeams, in their last decline;
As evening shadows, lingering on the plains,
Gleam dim and dimmer till they cease to shine:
|
The busy bee hath humm'd himself to rest;
Flowers dry to seed, that held the sweets of Spring;
Flown is the bird, and empty is the nest,
His broods are rear'd, no joys are left to sing.
There hangs a dreariness about the scene,
A present shadow of a bright has been.
Ah, sad to prove that Pleasure's golden springs,
Like common fountains, should so quickly dry,
And be so near allied to vulgar things!--
The joys of this world are but born to die.
|
sonnet
|
Paul Laurence Dunbar
|
A Choice
|
They please me not--these solemn songs
That hint of sermons covered up.
'Tis true the world should heed its wrongs,
But in a poem let me sup,
Not simples brewed to cure or ease
Humanity's confessed disease,
But the spirit-wine of a singing line,
Or a dew-drop in a honey cup!
|
They please me not--these solemn songs
That hint of sermons covered up.
|
'Tis true the world should heed its wrongs,
But in a poem let me sup,
Not simples brewed to cure or ease
Humanity's confessed disease,
But the spirit-wine of a singing line,
Or a dew-drop in a honey cup!
|
octave
|
Robert Herrick
|
On Himself.
|
I'll sing no more, nor will I longer write
Of that sweet lady, or that gallant knight.
I'll sing no more of frosts, snows, dews and showers;
No more of groves, meads, springs and wreaths of flowers.
I'll write no more, nor will I tell or sing
Of Cupid and his witty cozening:
I'll sing no more of death, or shall the grave
No more my dirges and my trentalls have.
|
I'll sing no more, nor will I longer write
Of that sweet lady, or that gallant knight.
|
I'll sing no more of frosts, snows, dews and showers;
No more of groves, meads, springs and wreaths of flowers.
I'll write no more, nor will I tell or sing
Of Cupid and his witty cozening:
I'll sing no more of death, or shall the grave
No more my dirges and my trentalls have.
|
octave
|
William Shakespeare
|
The Sonnets II - When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
|
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
|
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held:
|
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
|
sonnet
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
Poet
|
To clothe the fiery thought
In simple words succeeds,
For still the craft of genius is
To mask a king in weeds.
|
To clothe the fiery thought
|
In simple words succeeds,
For still the craft of genius is
To mask a king in weeds.
|
quatrain
|
Henry Lawson
|
The Squatter, Three Cornstalks, And The Well
|
(A Dirge of Sin and Sorrow, Sung by Joe Swallow)
There was a Squatter in the land,
So runs the truthful tale I tell,
There also were three cornstalks, and
There also was the Squatter's Well.
Singing (slowly): 'Sin and sorrer, sin and sor-rer, sin and sor-r-r-rer.'
The Squatter he was full of pluck,
The Cornstalks they were full of sin,
The well it was half full of muck
That many rains had drifted in.
Singing (with increased feeling): 'Sin, &c.'
The Squatter hired the Cornstalks Three
To cleanse the well of mud and clay;
And so they started willing-lee
At five-and-twenty bob a day.
Singing (apprehensively): 'Sin, &c.'
At five-and-twenty bob the lot,
That's eight-and-four the day would bring
To each; and so they thought they'd got
A rather soft and easy thing.
Singing (sadly): 'Sin, &c.'
The Cornstalks cleaned the well within
A day or two, or thereabout,
And then they worked an awful sin,
A scheme to make the job last out.
Singing (reproachfully): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
For when the well was cleaned out quite
Of all its logs and muck and clay
They tipped a drayload down at night
And worked to haul it up next day.
Singing (dismally): 'Sin, &c.'
But first the eldest, christened Hodge,
He greased the dray-wheel axles, so
The super wouldn't smell the dodge
And couldn't let the Squatter know.
Singing (hopelessly): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
The stuff they surfaced out each day
With some surprise the Squatter saw.
He never dreamt the sand and clay
Was three miles off the night before.
Singing (mournfully): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
But he got something in his eye;
It wasn't green, that's very plain.
He said the well was rather dry,
And they could fill it up again.
Singing (mournfully and dismally): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
The Cornstalks went to work next day
In hope, of course, of extra tin,
The Squatter watched, and, sad to say,
The mullock wouldn't all go in.
Singing (with great pathos): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
And though the Cornstalks twigged the ruse
Whereby the boss had done 'em brown,
They argued that the clay was loose,
And wanted time to settle down.
Singing (hopelessly): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
The boss began to rave and tear,
And yelled with a most awful frown,
'I will not settle up, I swear,
Till that there clay is settled down!'
Singing (hopefully): 'Sin, &c.'
'Before my cheques yer'Il pocket, boys,
Yer'll put a mountain in a well',
The Cornstalks didn't make a noise,
They only murmured sadly, !
Singing (triumphantly): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
MORAL:
There is a moral to my rhyme,
A moral to the dirge I sing,
That when you do go in for crime
You mustn't overdoo the thing.
Singing (more dismally than ever): 'Sin and sorrer, s-i-n and sor-r-r-r-rer!'
|
(A Dirge of Sin and Sorrow, Sung by Joe Swallow)
There was a Squatter in the land,
So runs the truthful tale I tell,
There also were three cornstalks, and
There also was the Squatter's Well.
Singing (slowly): 'Sin and sorrer, sin and sor-rer, sin and sor-r-r-rer.'
The Squatter he was full of pluck,
The Cornstalks they were full of sin,
The well it was half full of muck
That many rains had drifted in.
Singing (with increased feeling): 'Sin, &c.'
The Squatter hired the Cornstalks Three
To cleanse the well of mud and clay;
And so they started willing-lee
At five-and-twenty bob a day.
Singing (apprehensively): 'Sin, &c.'
At five-and-twenty bob the lot,
That's eight-and-four the day would bring
To each; and so they thought they'd got
A rather soft and easy thing.
Singing (sadly): 'Sin, &c.'
The Cornstalks cleaned the well within
A day or two, or thereabout,
And then they worked an awful sin,
|
A scheme to make the job last out.
Singing (reproachfully): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
For when the well was cleaned out quite
Of all its logs and muck and clay
They tipped a drayload down at night
And worked to haul it up next day.
Singing (dismally): 'Sin, &c.'
But first the eldest, christened Hodge,
He greased the dray-wheel axles, so
The super wouldn't smell the dodge
And couldn't let the Squatter know.
Singing (hopelessly): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
The stuff they surfaced out each day
With some surprise the Squatter saw.
He never dreamt the sand and clay
Was three miles off the night before.
Singing (mournfully): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
But he got something in his eye;
It wasn't green, that's very plain.
He said the well was rather dry,
And they could fill it up again.
Singing (mournfully and dismally): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
The Cornstalks went to work next day
In hope, of course, of extra tin,
The Squatter watched, and, sad to say,
The mullock wouldn't all go in.
Singing (with great pathos): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
And though the Cornstalks twigged the ruse
Whereby the boss had done 'em brown,
They argued that the clay was loose,
And wanted time to settle down.
Singing (hopelessly): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
The boss began to rave and tear,
And yelled with a most awful frown,
'I will not settle up, I swear,
Till that there clay is settled down!'
Singing (hopefully): 'Sin, &c.'
'Before my cheques yer'Il pocket, boys,
Yer'll put a mountain in a well',
The Cornstalks didn't make a noise,
They only murmured sadly, !
Singing (triumphantly): 'Sin and sorrer, &c.'
MORAL:
There is a moral to my rhyme,
A moral to the dirge I sing,
That when you do go in for crime
You mustn't overdoo the thing.
Singing (more dismally than ever): 'Sin and sorrer, s-i-n and sor-r-r-r-rer!'
|
free_verse
|
John Hartley
|
A Quiet Day.
|
A'a! its grand to have th' place to yorsen!
To get th' wimmen fowk all aght o'th' way!
Mine's all off for a trip up to th' Glen,
An aw've th' haase to misen for a day.
If aw'd mi life to spend ovver ageean,
Aw'd be bothered wi' nooan o' that mak;
What they're gooid for aw nivver could leearn,
Except to spooart clooas o' ther back.
Nah, aw'll have a quiet pipe, just for once,
Aw'm soa thankful to think 'at they're shut;
An its seldom a chap has a chonce; -
Whear the dickens has th' matches been put?
Well, nah then, aw've th' foir to leet, -
It will'nt tak long will'nt that,
An as sooin as its gotten burned breet,
Aw'il fry some puttates up i' fat.
Aw know aw'm a stunner to cook, -
Guys-hang-it! this kinlin's damp!
It does nowt but splutter an smook,
An this Hue's ov a varry poor stamp.
It's lukkin confaandedly black, -
Its as dismal an dull as mi hat;
Nah, Sal leets a foir in a crack, -
Aw will give her credit for that.
Ther's nowt nicer nor taties when fried, -
Aw could ait em to ivvery meal;
Aw can't get 'em, altho' aw've oft tried, -
Its some trouble aw know varry weel.
Th' foirs aght! an it stops aght for me!
Aw'il bother noa mooar wi' th' old freet!
Next time they set off for a spree,
They'st net leeav me th' foir to leet.
Aw dooant care mich for coffee an teah,
Aw can do wi' some milk an a cake;
An fried taties they ne'er seem to me,
Worth th' bother an stink 'at they make.
Whear's th' milk? Oh, its thear, an aw'm blest,
That cat has its heead reight i'th' pot;
S'cat! witta! A'a, hang it aw've missed!
If aw hav'nt aw owt to be shot!
An th' pooaker's flown cleean throo a pane;
It wor fooilish to throw it, that's true;
Them 'at keep sich like cats are insane,
For aw ne'er see noa gooid 'at they do.
Aw think aw'il walk aght for a while,
But, bless us! mi shooin isn't blackt!
Aw'm net used to be sarved i' this style,
An aw think at ther's somdy gooan crackt.
It doesn't show varry mich thowt,
When aw'm left wi' all th' haasewark to do,
For fowk to set off an do nowt,
Net soa mich as to blacken a shoe.
It'll be dinner time nah varry sooin, -
An ther's beefsteaks i'th' cubbord aw know;
But aw can't leet that foir bi nooin,
An aw can't ait beefsteak when its raw.
Aw tell'd Sal this morn 'at shoo'd find,
A rare appetite up i' that Glen;
An aw think if aw dooant change mi mind,
Aw shall manage to find one misen.
Aw wor fooilish to send 'em away,
But they'll ha to do th' best at they can;
But aw'st feel reight uneasy all th' day, -
Wimmen's net fit to goa baght a man.
They've noa nooation what prices to pay,
An they dooant know th' best places to call;
Aw'il be bun it'll cost 'em to-day,
What wod pay my expences an all.
It luks better, aw fancy, beside,
When a chap taks his family raand;
Nah, suppooas they should goa for a ride,
An be pitched ovver th' brig an be draand.
Aw ne'er should feel happy ageean,
If owt happen'd when aw wor away;
An to leeav 'em i' danger luks meean,
Just for th' sake o' mi own quiet day.
Aw could catch th' train at leeavs abaat nooin;
E'e, gow! that'll be a gooid trick!
An aw'st get a gooid dinner for gooin,
An th' foir can goa to old Nick.
Its a pity to miss mi quiet day,
But its better to do that 'at's reight;
An it matters nowt what fowk may say,
But a chap mun ha summat to ait,
|
A'a! its grand to have th' place to yorsen!
To get th' wimmen fowk all aght o'th' way!
Mine's all off for a trip up to th' Glen,
An aw've th' haase to misen for a day.
If aw'd mi life to spend ovver ageean,
Aw'd be bothered wi' nooan o' that mak;
What they're gooid for aw nivver could leearn,
Except to spooart clooas o' ther back.
Nah, aw'll have a quiet pipe, just for once,
Aw'm soa thankful to think 'at they're shut;
An its seldom a chap has a chonce; -
Whear the dickens has th' matches been put?
Well, nah then, aw've th' foir to leet, -
It will'nt tak long will'nt that,
An as sooin as its gotten burned breet,
Aw'il fry some puttates up i' fat.
Aw know aw'm a stunner to cook, -
Guys-hang-it! this kinlin's damp!
It does nowt but splutter an smook,
An this Hue's ov a varry poor stamp.
It's lukkin confaandedly black, -
Its as dismal an dull as mi hat;
Nah, Sal leets a foir in a crack, -
Aw will give her credit for that.
Ther's nowt nicer nor taties when fried, -
Aw could ait em to ivvery meal;
Aw can't get 'em, altho' aw've oft tried, -
Its some trouble aw know varry weel.
|
Th' foirs aght! an it stops aght for me!
Aw'il bother noa mooar wi' th' old freet!
Next time they set off for a spree,
They'st net leeav me th' foir to leet.
Aw dooant care mich for coffee an teah,
Aw can do wi' some milk an a cake;
An fried taties they ne'er seem to me,
Worth th' bother an stink 'at they make.
Whear's th' milk? Oh, its thear, an aw'm blest,
That cat has its heead reight i'th' pot;
S'cat! witta! A'a, hang it aw've missed!
If aw hav'nt aw owt to be shot!
An th' pooaker's flown cleean throo a pane;
It wor fooilish to throw it, that's true;
Them 'at keep sich like cats are insane,
For aw ne'er see noa gooid 'at they do.
Aw think aw'il walk aght for a while,
But, bless us! mi shooin isn't blackt!
Aw'm net used to be sarved i' this style,
An aw think at ther's somdy gooan crackt.
It doesn't show varry mich thowt,
When aw'm left wi' all th' haasewark to do,
For fowk to set off an do nowt,
Net soa mich as to blacken a shoe.
It'll be dinner time nah varry sooin, -
An ther's beefsteaks i'th' cubbord aw know;
But aw can't leet that foir bi nooin,
An aw can't ait beefsteak when its raw.
Aw tell'd Sal this morn 'at shoo'd find,
A rare appetite up i' that Glen;
An aw think if aw dooant change mi mind,
Aw shall manage to find one misen.
Aw wor fooilish to send 'em away,
But they'll ha to do th' best at they can;
But aw'st feel reight uneasy all th' day, -
Wimmen's net fit to goa baght a man.
They've noa nooation what prices to pay,
An they dooant know th' best places to call;
Aw'il be bun it'll cost 'em to-day,
What wod pay my expences an all.
It luks better, aw fancy, beside,
When a chap taks his family raand;
Nah, suppooas they should goa for a ride,
An be pitched ovver th' brig an be draand.
Aw ne'er should feel happy ageean,
If owt happen'd when aw wor away;
An to leeav 'em i' danger luks meean,
Just for th' sake o' mi own quiet day.
Aw could catch th' train at leeavs abaat nooin;
E'e, gow! that'll be a gooid trick!
An aw'st get a gooid dinner for gooin,
An th' foir can goa to old Nick.
Its a pity to miss mi quiet day,
But its better to do that 'at's reight;
An it matters nowt what fowk may say,
But a chap mun ha summat to ait,
|
free_verse
|
William Shakespeare
|
The Sonnets CXXXII - Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me
|
Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
Have put on black and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
And truly not the morning sun of heaven
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
Nor that full star that ushers in the even,
Doth half that glory to the sober west,
As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
O! let it then as well beseem thy heart
To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,
And suit thy pity like in every part.
Then will I swear beauty herself is black,
And all they foul that thy complexion lack.
|
Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
Have put on black and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
|
And truly not the morning sun of heaven
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
Nor that full star that ushers in the even,
Doth half that glory to the sober west,
As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
O! let it then as well beseem thy heart
To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,
And suit thy pity like in every part.
Then will I swear beauty herself is black,
And all they foul that thy complexion lack.
|
sonnet
|
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